


Spectrum

by salineshots



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Endgame Sheith, Fix-It, Multi, POV Multiple, everyone gets an arc, i love all of these characters so much okay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2019-11-14 13:42:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 35,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18053582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salineshots/pseuds/salineshots
Summary: The empty space in the circlet looked deeper in the medical bay’s flat lighting. Allura turned the crown over in her fingers, rotating it in one revolution after another, and thought that it didn’t look so golden anymore.She couldn’t think of a better place for the crown's jewel to be. It was exactly where it was needed, and Allura didn’t regret giving it up for a moment, but now wearing an empty crown seemed a little silly. It wasn’t like there was an Altea left for her to be the princess of.___This is my rewrite of the Voltron finale, starting from the end of season 7. I want to see how much I can fix without changing anything from s1-7, but just writing my own seasons 8 and 9. There are too many loose ends to just leave it alone.I'm writing this how I think the show could have actually been done to make the best story. No bad words or anything. Rotating perspectives.





	1. Phoenix

The empty space in the circlet looked deeper in the medical bay’s flat lighting. Allura turned the crown over in her fingers, rotating it in one revolution after another, and thought that it didn’t look so golden anymore.

She couldn’t think of a better place for the crown's jewel to be. It was exactly where it was needed, and Allura didn’t regret giving it up for a moment, but now wearing an empty crown seemed a little silly. It wasn’t like there was an Altea left for her to be the princess of.

She sighed and dropped her face into her palm. She only looked up again when she felt a hand rest on her shoulder.

“It’s been a phoeb,” Coran said. “You don't need to wait here, Princess. She's as likely to wake up now as she was yesterday.” Their conversation was quiet behind the glass of the ICU, and Allura looked in at the Altean on the gurney inside, swarmed in cords and steady, weary monitors. It had been a miracle enough to extract her alive from the unknown mech, and their battle since then had been to keep her stable.

“Her readings are stronger today.” Allura folded her arms around herself, still turning the crown in her fingers. “How is Romelle?”

“Still despondent. I finally convinced her to get some rest, but this Luca means a great deal to her.”

“Hopefully Romelle will be able to help us get through to her.” Allura studied Luca from her side of the glass. Meeting Romelle had been enough of a shock, but to have _another_ Altean appear in such a short time was disorienting. Her people weren't entirely gone, and Romelle and Luca were proof that they were being subjugated and abused. “We need to know who built that machine. Sam and his team are still studying it, but it…”

Her mouth was dry. She stopped talking until Coran squeezed her shoulder comfortingly, and she sighed.

“It is frighteningly similar to the ship I helped Lotor build.”

“You're afraid that he's still out there,” Coran observed quietly.

“I don't know. It would be a dangerous thing to assume, and a dangerous possibility to ignore. But even if he was, he could not have built that ship alone.”

Coran was quiet for another moment. He took his hand from Allura's shoulder to rest on the circlet and stop her fiddling with it.

“May I keep this safe for you, Princess?” he asked.

It wasn't like she would be wearing it again. Allura swallowed roughly, nodded, and let go of the circlet.

“Thank you, Coran.”

Even without looking at him, Allura knew Coran was holding the crown with gentle reverence. There used to be a photograph of him holding her as an infant like that.

“When you're ready, the Coalition delegates would like to talk with you and Sam about the embassies,” he reminded her, and she nodded again.

“I'll be right there.”

 

* * *

 

The city encompassing the Garrison couldn't have grown this quickly without the Coalition. They called it Phoenix, just like the ashes under it.

The bazaar had popped up in separate stands at first, and then buildings were renovated or reconstructed. The landscape and architecture were familiar to Hunk, but the people were strangers. Earth’s survivors met the infinite blend of cultures that flooded in to offer them support, and though he recognized _Earth_ , Phoenix was an uncanny valley.

It had been so long since he had seen a new human face that his brain almost couldn’t process it. Everyone was an alien, along with the paladins. This was a city of aliens. The streets had taco vendors, and the florists sold flowers he actually knew the names of. He recognized the languages of Earth, spoken by frightened and weary refugees. He knew the sounds of Arabic and French and Hindi, even if he couldn’t understand the words. He saw people wearing t-shirts and walking dogs. And then a Nalassrian glassblower caught his attention, or a Yzrish apothecary would offer him a sample of something, or an Olkari would walk by or even wave at him.

“When we started building the Coalition, I kept wondering when we’d get Earth to join it, but I didn’t think it would be like this.” It hurt to smile, but Hunk made the effort.

“Well, this wasn’t how we thought extraterrestrials would come to Earth,” Lance murmured under the street chatter. He didn’t seem ready to try smiling. “We didn’t think we’d come home to find that our entire species could fit into Spain.”

Billions. Voltron had vanished for three years, and Sendak had killed billions and enslaved the few remaining.

Hunk was quiet for a moment, but he leaned closer and nudged Lance’s shoulder with his own as they walked. It was a small gesture, and Hunk hoped that it would show Lance due support without negating the grief they both felt.

“We’re finding more survivors every day,” Hunk reminded him, because it was all he could do. “There were _a lot_ of underground movements. A lot of resistances. We’re scheduled to get another refugee boat today. And that new shelter is opening up, and those new apartments, and the new hospital.”

“Yeah.” Lance got something close to a smile on his face. The Coalition was saving individuals. The world was being patched back together. There was still something left of it. They had to keep reminding themselves of that. He reached out and tapped an orange paper flower hanging on display in one of the merchant cart windows, and they watched it swing as they walked by. “And it's nice to see so many people from the Coalition coming to help. I mean, the supplies alone, it's insane.”

“I know. We actually have enough to feed everyone. I mean, a lot of it's goo and emergency meals, but it's food. And Planet Dorasai brought in tailors to give the refugees new clothes.”

“They did?” There was a real smile on Lance's face. “Good. I know _we_ got fitted for stuff, and I told them it wasn't fair.”

“Well, a lot of it's salvage, too. There were a few undamaged areas.” Hunk caught himself too late and flinched at the words. He and Lance took a few silent steps side by side.

“I'm really glad Samoa's okay,” Lance said.

“Lance, I'm so sorry.”

“It's…” It wasn't fine. Lance waved it off anyway. He took a deep breath and put the smile back on. “So, what about tonight?”

“ _What_ about tonight?” Hunk asked defensively. Lance looked up at him with a grin and a wink.

“With Shay. Did she get fitted for anything? A nice dress for your date?”

Hunk scoffed, scandalized. It was ridiculous, but this was a distraction they both needed. “It's not a date! She's _my_ date, but _it's_ not a date.”

“Buddy, that makes no sense. You asked her to go with you. She said yes. It's a date.”

“But I didn't organize it,” Hunk clarified. “So I can't take credit for it. Not a date.”

They found a shop selling just what they needed, and they stepped inside, gratified to meet air conditioning. A surprising number of the buildings were equipped already. There was even a little bell on the door, and for a second, they were on Earth again. Hunk took a deep breath of the sweet, humid air, and he and Lance navigated through the rows of flowers, lit by the windows and the artificial sunlight overhead.

“Welcome!” the young woman at the counter called, but she didn't look up from tying a bow around the flared lip of a vase. “We're gonna sell out pretty quick for tonight, so get what you want now.”

On the back wall was a sign:

_Our sale of botanical material is licensed by the Voltron Coalition: Phoenix Division. Our flowers are currently available based on supply from the city greenhouses. No special orders. Seeds and seedlings to be available soon._

Plants were a luxury. Buying flowers in a recovering desert city was freaking opulent, but Hunk had to allow himself just one indulgent thing in the middle of this mess. More importantly, it was for Shay. He found his way to a pot full of bright yellow daisies, and when he wanted to buy a few, the girl came and trimmed them fresh. She tied them together with a white bow, and he passed her his card with the newly instated Voltron Coalition Currency on it.

“Forty-two cees,” the girl said.

Hunk wanted to say ‘ouch,’ but he thanked her instead. He wanted to bring Shay flowers on their first not-date, and he wanted to see her face when she was given a bouquet that looked like sunshine.

When Hunk looked back to find Lance, he saw him standing by a loosely manicured rosebush. It had a stand to climb on in the corner by the window, and its blooms were pink.

“Do it,” Hunk said.

Lance all but leapt back from the roses.

“I wasn't,” Lance yelped, and Hunk shared a doubtful glance with the flower girl.

“Do it,” she said.

Lance's shoulders fell, and he looked so pathetic that Hunk wasn't sure whether to pat him on the back or slap him.

“I don't know if I can,” Lance mumbled.

“Dude, what's the worst that she can say? It's better than seeing you bottle it in like this. You've liked her forever.”

Lance worried his lip between his teeth, stared at the roses, and mumbled, “I want to. I mean, I want her to know, but what if it’s selfish of me to tell her? If she doesn’t like me back, it’ll just make things weird.”

“Hey.” The flower girl shook her head and crossed the little aisle to stand beside Lance. She snipped one stem from the rosebush, trimmed the thorns, and put it in Lance's hand. It was a young, slender bloom, and Hunk thought it was the most elegant one in the shop. “If you bring her a flower, at least she'll know you mean it.”

Lance stared guiltily at the flower like it had scolded him. Then he set his jaw and nodded.

“Yeah. Yeah, I can do this,” he decided.

“Yeah, you can,” she said. “Five cees. Discount for emotional turmoil.”

Lance snorted and passed her his card.

 

* * *

 

“Matthew, would you put that down for three seconds?” Colleen snapped. A family lunch wasn't supposed to be such a tense affair, but Pidge's mom always found a way to impress. She set down a casserole dish while Sam brought out the salad. Matt was still staring at his datapad, and Pidge took a long sip of her water, still eyeing Matt's fiance across the table.

Lunch was made of their “nice” food that they had saved up, and it was in Sam and Colleen's small Garrison apartment. Matt and Vao had their own room a few hallways down, and Pidge's quarters were in the Atlas with the other paladins'. Like everyone else, they were put up in bare bones lodging with as much food as the Coalition and fast-growing greenhouses could distribute. They were lucky enough to receive some of the produce ready from the greenhouses, so they had something fresh to go with the scavenged and repurposed contents of a few MRE packs.

“Olia’s updating me,” Matt said without looking up from the datapad. His eyes scanned it faster, and he held it a little further from his face as if fighting a magnetic draw to it. “Give me one second.” Vao put a hand on his elbow and gave him what might be considered a ‘look,’ if their mask had any expression to it at all, but it cowed Matt enough to put the pad down altogether.

“Thank you, Colleen,” Vao said through their mask. Pidge thought their voice would probably sound clean and pretty without the filter, but the mechanical buzz sounded cool, too. “It looks wonderful.”

“You’re very welcome, Vao,” Pidge’s mom replied. She took a seat at one end of the table, and Sam took the other. “Now, are you sure this is safe for you to eat? The cellulose structure…”

“My species can digest it, yes. Please don’t worry.”

“And your ventilator?” Colleen pressed. “Arizona’s not exactly humid.”

“I’ll be fine,” Vao assured her, laughing softly. “I can breathe dry air for a little while.”

“Okay.” Colleen was still watching them like she was closing an interrogation. “Well, you let us know if you need anything, alright?”

“I will. Matt changed the climate regulator in our room to suit us both.”

“Our ‘climate regulator’ is really just four humidifiers,” Matt clarified, “but it works.”

“Sounds like we should add a sauna when we build our new place,” Sam said. Pidge passed him the salad when she was done serving herself, and the food made its way around the small table. When everyone was served, Vao reached up to the bottom half of their mask, and Pidge and her parents pretended not to pay intense attention.

The base of their mask clicked, split down the middle, and withdrew into the upper half of the helmet. Their skin was an incredibly fair silver-blue, their nose was hardly a defined feature on their face at all, and their thin lips stretched wider than anyone had really expected. They parted for a second to show the tips of pointed teeth, sharp all the way across, and then their mouth closed tightly. Vao’s face ducked by an inch, and when Matt noticed, he put a hand on their back and murmured, “It’s okay, babe.”

Vao pressed their thin lips into a thinner line, and then they pulled into a closed smile. When everyone started to eat, that particular note of tension fizzled out quickly.

“You've been quiet, Katie,” Sam had to point out in his gentle dad way. Pidge shrugged and busied herself with a bite of salad. She wasn’t getting out of answering, though, no matter how long she chewed. When she started to pick up another bite on her fork, her dad was still waiting patiently. She sighed and bounced her fork between her fingers.

“Just adjusting, I guess. It’s not a bad thing,” she said.

Adjusting. That was it. She had her family back together, and none of it felt the same. It felt right to have the four of them together again, plus Vao, but the table would have been too small to seat the rest of her family.

That was selfish. It wasn’t appropriate for her to feel homesick. Everyone was home.

The point was that her mother had been alone for a year. Colleen Holt had believed that her husband and both of their children were dead for a year. Pidge could sit up straight and let her mother have this moment of peace, so she fixed her posture and took a bite of the casserole.

It tasted like some kind of protein and stale spices, but the garlic really saved it. Her mother had cooked this, and it warmed her to the bone. She wiped at her eyes as subtly as she could, and nobody called her out on it.

“It’s really good, Mom,” she said faintly, and she took another bite. Across the table, Colleen smiled and began to relax her shoulders.

 

* * *

 

Keith and Krolia were silent as they stepped out from Black’s mouth and onto the walkway. The cemetery belonged to the remains of a little town south of Phoenix, and the site hadn’t been maintained during the occupation. Some of the headstones had split or fallen over. Several plots had been overgrown by weeds, and the yellow grass was working on the others.

“I haven’t been here since I was a kid,” Keith said nearly under his breath. The whole place looked different, and it took him a moment of exploring to find the right headstone. When he stopped in front of it, his mom and wolf stepped up beside him.

 

_“Tex”_

_John Wyatt Turner-Kogane_

_May 15, 2208--July 17, 2243_

 

His mom inhaled sharply, and it broke Keith’s heart. They stood in silence, waiting for some realization that would make it stop hurting, and it didn’t come.

“Did you call him Tex?” he asked as gently as he knew how.

His mom nodded and pulled on a smile without looking away from the grave. She dropped her hand from his shoulder, took Keith's hand, and squeezed it. She let their hands swing between them, slow and tired, but sweet. Keith had seen moms do that in movies before. Maybe she had too.

“When you were born,” she said, navigating the words like they might hurt, “he promised to you that he'd be a good father. The kind who never yells.”

“He yelled a couple of times,” Keith said with a chuckle. “When I almost put my hand in the garbage disposal, or when I tried to ride my bike off the roof.” His mom laughed in surprise, and Keith smiled and held her hand tighter. “But when he caught me drawing on the table, he didn’t yell. He just said, ‘That’s the wrong place for that, son,’ made me clean it up, and got me a sketchbook. Just a calm, gentle guy. He was a really good dad.”

“I’m glad.” Keith had never seen his mother cry, and he realized that it might never happen, but her voice dropped and it sounded like a close thing. “I wish I had been there to see it.”

They hadn’t gotten to have known him at the same time. They didn’t have memories of him together, and though Keith had gotten to spend more time with him, he envied that his mother had known him without the biases and hazy recollections of childhood. Now that he was grown, he wished that he could have talked with his dad, man to man.

And there were things he couldn’t tell his mother. He couldn’t tell her how sad his father had looked whenever Keith had asked about her. He couldn’t tell her how many times he had offhandedly told Keith, ‘Your mother loved this song,’ or ‘Your mother hated this truck.’ He couldn’t tell her how many times his dad had played that song in that truck.

“He missed you,” was all Keith said, and that was still too much.

“I miss him, too,” she whispered.

She took her hand back from his and let out a particularly heavy sigh. When he looked back at her, she was shuffling the wildflowers they had brought. She split the bouquet and passed half of it to him, and Keith took it and knelt by the left side of the grave. The in-ground vase was full of dust, so he pried it out, emptied it the best he could, and tucked the flowers into it when he placed it back. His mom did the same for the other side.

“How old were you?” she asked.

“Ten.” Keith’s voice was hollow. “He didn’t come home. The police picked me up that morning.”

“And then the foster home?”

“And then the home,” he agreed, just a sigh. He didn’t want to think about the scraped knuckles, dirty kitchen, and peeling wallpaper he associated with that memory, so he stood up and dusted off his knees. He was ready to go, but his mom touched the headstone, solemn and curious. Keith watched her trace the engraved lettering.

“I’m glad we have this place for him,” she said quietly.

The Empire didn’t have graves, and neither did the Blades. That had begun to seem normal to Keith.

 

* * *

 

Shiro’s arm didn’t feel heavy. The weight distribution was all off and made him feel like he was walking at a slant, but if he was, Allura, Iverson, and Sam didn’t point it out. He couldn’t decide what to do with it, either. Folding it across his chest or behind his back felt awkward, but letting it hang by his side was even weirder. He might have left it in his bunk altogether, but it would have followed him out onto the launch pad of the Garrison. He kept it folded over his left arm across his chest, and he stared out at the canyons on the horizon while the others talked.

“It was the Coalition’s idea,” Allura reminded Iverson for the third time. “It’s not an exclusive event. It will be city-wide.”

“Do you think these people want a freaking party right now?” Iverson wasn’t a bad guy. Shiro knew that. He was just a tired guy. “They’re scared. They don’t have permanent homes yet. And frankly, they’re terrified of all the aliens flooding in. Last time that happened--”

“I know,” Sam cut in. “That’s why they need this. Phoenix is a city populated by refugees. They need to feel welcome here, and they need to internalize that the Coalition is here to help.”

“So you think a gala is what they need?” Iverson snorted.

“They can’t take any more memorials,” Shiro said, watching the canyons in the distance waver. It was a hot day, and he didn’t mind it at all. He had all of these nice, physical things to enjoy, like horizons and temperature. “What they need at this point is something to mark the end of the nightmare. God forbid we give them nice food and some music.”

“And it doesn’t hurt that we have a new admiral to celebrate,” Sam reminded them, shooting Shiro a grin.

“We’ve promoted a lot of officers,” he replied. He didn’t mean to sound empty, but there had been too many stations to fill.

“Be that as it may,” Allura said, “you won’t be in want of handshakes or dance partners.”

“I’m sure I won’t.” A flash over the canyons caught his eye, and Shiro straightened his back and let a smile warm his face. “And there he is.”

The Black Lion slowed as it approached the Garrison. Even if the windows were built not to shatter whenever a nearby ship broke the sound barrier, it was a courtesy to the eardrums of everyone around. Black touched down far more gently than one would expect of mystical metal alloy meeting concrete, and then Keith was stepping off of the ramp, followed by Krolia and their wolf. He took off his helmet, tucked it under his arm, and smiled when he saw him.

“Welcome back,” Shiro said once they had come close enough to talk.

“We were only gone for an hour and a half,” Keith replied with a laugh under his voice. The wolf trotted forward, wagging his tail, and Shiro knelt down to rub his neck.

“Hey, Kosmo! Did you go for a ride?” Shiro’s puppy-talk only made Kosmo wag his tail harder, and when he started licking Shiro’s face, there was nothing else for him to do but shut his eyes tight and make kissy sounds.

“Shiro, not you too,” Keith groaned. “He’s a space wolf, not a lap dog.”

“A very big lap dog,” Shiro corrected him. He tipped his head upward so Kosmo could only get at his chin.

“But the _name._ ”

Shiro squinted up at Keith, held Kosmo back, and looked the wolf in the eyes.

“Kosmo,” he said clearly. Kosmo shifted his weight off of one leg, and he slowly rolled over onto his back, still wagging his tail. Shiro looked back up to Keith and gestured.

Keith scoffed. “Just because he likes you doesn’t mean his name is Kosmo.”

“We’ll see.” Shiro rubbed Kosmo’s belly and stood up, dusting threads of blue fur off of his uniform. “Did you find what you needed?”

“We did.” Krolia said it like a mission report, but that was the way she always talked. The tension in her face was what stopped Shiro. He looked to Keith for explanation, and Keith shrugged stiffly.

“It was a… family visit.”

“Oh.” Shiro’s face fell. “Oh, Keith.”

“It’s fine,” Keith said quickly, and Krolia even smiled.

“It was nice,” she decided. She rubbed Kosmo’s ear when he stepped up to her and leaned against her thigh.

Iverson cleared his throat behind him, and Shiro looked over his shoulder, still wiping Kosmo off of his face.

“Shiro.” Iverson never looked this nervous. It was awkward to behold. “Speaking of family visits.”

Shiro tried to process his meaning and came up short, but a knot formed in the base of his throat. He turned to look at him fully.

“Mitch, what is it?”

The clean hum of a shuttle broke the beat of the conversation. Their little group on the concrete looked up to watch the white ship glide over the Garrison, curve gracefully, and make a gentle vertical landing. A team from the facility stepped up to the craft and waited as the doors opened.

“That’s our newest refugee shuttle.” Iverson hadn’t needed to say it. Shiro knew that. Why was Iverson saying it? “Shiro, listen. I only just got the confirmation. She’ll have to be processed with the other arrivals, but she--”

“Mitch?” Shiro’s voice broke into a whisper. He was shaking. His skin felt like static. Sam put a hand on his shoulder and used his calm, reasonable tone.

“Shiro, I know you were trying not to hope, so we didn’t want to tell you until we were sure.”

“Sam, what’s happening?” Shiro asked desperately, staring at the shuttle. He watched the line of people being led out, toward them, and then into the safety of the Garrison doors nearby. He could see their faces. He could see little family clusters, people on their own, frightened survivors clinging to whatever they had left. He could see a thin, willowy woman stepping out of line to speak urgently with one of the officers. The officer looked up and right at Shiro, and the woman did the same.

Her hair was all grey. She was gaunt and looked far older than she was, but that was her face. Those were her kind, dark eyes, bright with shock.

Why wouldn’t she be shocked?

Scars weren’t the half of it. His arm was gone. His hair wasn’t black. His face didn’t feel like his own anymore. This wasn’t even his own body.

He stood there, frozen, and a part of him hoped she would look right through him, fail to recognize him, and walk away. Instead, she curled her bony hands together and stepped forward.

“Takashi?” she called, wavering.

He was hardly aware of the sob that broke through him. He took one step to make sure it was okay.

“Mom?”

She ran for him. He walked forward until he caught her. She buried her face in his shoulder and wept, and he hugged her as tightly as he dared to, crying into her hair.

 

* * *

 

Lance kept the rose hidden when he and Hunk came back to the Garrison, but he held a modest shopping bag in his hand. The first place they swung by was Lance’s family’s apartment, and he tucked the rose into the little fridge in the corner to keep it fresh. When he didn’t find his family there, they turned to the mess hall. It was a good time for a late lunch, and it was where most of the crew and refugees went to cook and share meals collectively.

Lance and Hunk’s families were getting along like a house on fire. Really, they seemed like one big family altogether, with their parents chatting and their youngest relatives playing with a battered deck of cards at a corner table. Hunk took every chance he got to hug his family members, and he took another right then before setting his own shopping bag on the table, and over greetings and invitations from their families to join the conversation, Lance and Hunk unloaded the prizes they had brought.

“Here,” Lance said, passing Silvio and Nadia a gently-used board game in a box. “This one actually has all the pieces.”

“Yes!” Silvio shouted, shooting both fists into the air, and Luis hushed his son with a gentle ruffle on his head. Luis got a bottle of decent lotion--the desert air was murder on his hands--and Lisa got one of those puzzle cubes that Lance hated, but she loved. Marco got a set of pens and a notepad that would keep his anxious mind busy, and Rachel got a yellowed but intact copy of her favorite classical book. His dad got another book, a nonfiction one that he kept recommending and that Lance still hadn’t read, and his mom got a small but sweetly voiced wind-up music box.

His mom reached up from her seat and dragged him down to hug him tightly.

“Thank you, sweetie,” she said. “You didn’t have to.”

This had been the entirety of Lance’s allowance, and it was worth it. He smiled and squeezed her in his arms.

“Yeah, I did,” he chuckled.

“What about me?” Veronica asked with an arch of her brow, and Lance sighed and reached comically far into the bag.

“Well, let’s see, they were fresh out of _manners,_  so I got you this.” He took out the last gift and dropped it into Veronica’s hand. It was a pocket-sized multipurpose tool, almost like the one she had kept so jealously while they were growing up. The sass faded from her face, and she twirled it in her fingers, showing a little smile.

“Thanks, Lance,” she said. “By the way, Shiro’s back there. He’s got someone he wants everyone to meet.”

“Does he?” Hunk raised both his eyebrows, and he and Lance looked back together to find Shiro’s table.

He was sitting beside a thin, older woman, and she was the only one eating at the table, working slowly on a bowl of soup. Shiro sat with his hands folded on the table and his head turned towards her like he couldn’t bear to look away from her. His smile looked like it had been stuck on his face for an hour and was beginning to settle into the corners of his eyes, and even over the distance and low chatter of the mess hall, Lance could tell that he was speaking especially softly. Keith and Krolia were seated across from them, and the gaunt woman kept looking up, glancing at the people around her, and dropping her eyes again before answering the quiet conversation with small, tired smiles. She was swamped in someone’s dark jacket.

“Is that…?” Lance hadn’t ever heard Shiro mention family. Come to think about it, Shiro didn’t talk about _anything_ personal. It seemed odd for someone who always spoke with the voice of an open book.

Veronica nodded. “That’s her.”

Lance and Hunk stepped away from their dense family table and made their way through the rows to that smaller one. When Shiro caught sight of them, he raised his head and beamed at them.

“Hunk! Lance! Welcome back. Have you met my mom?”

Of course they hadn’t, but Lance got the feeling Shiro just liked getting to ask that question. Lance had felt much the same way once he had gotten his own family back; he couldn’t stop reintroducing them to his friends, saying their names over and over again to make sure the other paladins knew them all by heart.

“I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure,” Hunk replied brightly. He took a seat beside Keith, and Lance found another spot next to Shiro. He had never seen their leader with this kind of vulnerable excitement, and they were going to cultivate it.

“Mom,” Shiro said, containing himself with a gentle voice, obviously not wanting to overwhelm her even while he was bursting at the seams, “this is Hunk, the Yellow Paladin, and Lance, the Red Paladin. Lance and Hunk, this is my mother, Shirogane Shoko.”

“It’s so good to meet you, Mrs. Shirogane,” Lance said sincerely. When she turned her eyes to him, just as dark and warm as Shiro’s, it hit him all over again how wonderful it was to be on Earth. She smiled back at him, and it touched her eyes.

“It’s good to meet you, too,” she replied. “Takashi has been telling me all about all of you. Thank you for bringing him home.”

She was personally thanking him for that. Lance wasn’t sure he could take an honor that monumental.

“ _He_ brought _us_ home,” Lance amended, smiling.

 

* * *

 

“You don't have to do all this,” Pidge told her mom for the second time. Colleen had come up to Pidge's room in the Atlas, and though Pidge would have had no trouble getting ready by herself, she didn't have the heart to push her mom out the door.

“Oh, come on, Katie. When's the last time you went to a dance?” Colleen opened the bag she had brought up, and she took out a pair of white shoes first before reaching in for something else. “Now, I found this in your size, and I think it's just adorable. Something elegant for a paladin.”

She took out a soft green dress, A-line and long-sleeved. It had buttons down one side of the front, and the white sash around the waist tied it together without making it fluffy.

It was a really nice dress.

Pidge turned her eyes away from it and rubbed her neck.

“Mom, you really didn't have to do that,” she started again, weaker that time. Colleen lowered the dress from presenting it.

“Do you not like it?” Colleen asked, and Pidge couldn't tell what her uneasy inflection meant.

“No, it's not that. It's really nice.” Pidge was fumbling. She sighed and dug a hand into her hair. “I just… don't think I want to wear a dress.”

She was afraid to see how her mom was looking at her. When she looked up at Colleen, she only saw confusion.

Pidge took a deep breath. This was her mom. As precarious as her stomach felt, her mom would listen.

“I just don't feel… girly.”

Her mom nodded. She set the dress back in the bag. Pidge waited in anxious silence, and her mom sat down on the side of the bed and patted the spot next to her. Carefully, Pidge took it.

“You used to like dresses,” Colleen said. There was nothing accusing about the stated question. Pidge could hear her wrapping her head around it.

“I know. I was fine with them before. But I've sort of… With the paladins, I've had time to get to know myself better, and…” Pidge was wringing her hands on her knees. She was never the kind to wring her hands--not her, nor Colleen.

“Do you want me to start calling you Pidge?” her mom asked.

She was sincere. Pidge's eyes stung, and she grinned up at her mom.

“You don't have to. I'm happy with being a girl,” she explained. “I guess I'm just not super feminine. I'm still figuring it out.”

“You don't have to have it all figured out,” her mom said, smiling back at her. “And you don't have to wear a dress. But you _do_ have to remember you can talk to me, okay?” She opened her arms, and Pidge leaned into them and returned the hug.

“Okay. I'm sorry. You got me a dress and everything. I was just gonna wear my uniform.”

“It's not a problem. Besides…” Her mom pulled back from the hug to reach for the bag again. She shifted aside the dress and took out another article of clothing in the same shade of green. When she held it out to show Pidge the suit jacket, the sting in her eyes reached her nose and throat. “Your brother got this for you.”

 

* * *

 

Allura found Romelle still tucked away in their shared room. She was curled up on her own bed, on her side with her back to the door, but her fingers were picking at the blankets to show that she wasn’t asleep.

“Romelle?” Allura prompted her, and Romelle’s slack figure deflated even further into the mattress with a weak sigh.

“I’m sorry, Princess. I know today is an important day, but I’m not feeling myself.”

Allura stepped forward, and Romelle didn’t move or speak again for the few moments it took Allura to sit down on the edge of the bed, pull her knees up onto it, and place a soft hand on her arm. When she rubbed Romelle’s shoulder, she heard her sniffle.

“I understand,” Allura murmured. It wasn’t a comparison, but an acceptance. “I won’t insist that you join us, but I hope that you will.”

Romelle shook her head. Allura couldn’t see her face any further than the corner of her cheek, but she didn’t need to when Romelle drew a hand up to her eyes and wiped at them.

“I’ve been afraid since… We disappeared, and the colony was gone when we returned. I had no idea what had happened to her.”

“I know.” Allura’s hand traveled upward, and she pet Romelle’s hair instead. There was something painful and warm about the gestures, about being able to offer affection and reassurance to another person. “We’ll take care of her, Romelle. We’re doing everything we can.”

“It doesn’t feel that way. I want to be by her side,” Romelle said, her voice taking on a sharper edge. “I know you insisted that I get some rest. Coran came to pull me from the medbay, but I know it was you.”

“It was,” Allura admitted with no fight at all. “Please trust me. You need your strength.”

“I can’t get any rest, Allura. I can’t do this. I can’t…” Romelle fell quiet, and she started to shake.

Allura lay down behind her. All that was left for her to do was to wrap her arms around her, hug her, and let Romelle grip the back of her wrists to keep the support tucked close to her.

“You haven’t lost her yet,” Allura whispered. “You're strong, Romelle. You have to be ready for her when she wakes up.”

Romelle admitted one ragged sob, and she muffled the rest into the pillow.

“How do you do it?” Romelle asked. It hurt, but Allura considered it silently.

“I don’t know. But you take one step at a time. You solve one problem at a time. I do my best to make my father proud. And occasionally, I dress up and go to dances, and I remember all the people I have with me. And you still have Luca, and you have us.” Allura put on a fragile smile, and she didn’t know who it was for. “Do you want to dress up a little? You can sit with Luca. If you want to wait with her, you might feel better in something pretty.”

Romelle gave the slightest, choking laugh.

“That’s not a bad idea. I may do that.”

“Good. I’ll help you pick something out. And if the mood strikes you to come and spend a little time with the rest of us, we’ll love to have you.”

Romelle nodded. She sniffed again and sat up. Allura followed the motion, and they sat together on the bed while Romelle dried her eyes.

 

* * *

 

“Mom, it doesn't go like that.” Keith didn't have the heart to swat his mom’s hands away from the tie around his neck, so his hands hovered in the vicinity, waiting for a chance to intervene without collision. He had come to her room for help while he got ready, but neither of them knew what they were doing, and they were both too stubborn to ask anyone else. The wolf watched and waited from the corner by the door, entirely unhelpful. With their combined efforts, they had made an uncomfortably tight knot. Any tighter and Keith would hopefully pass out and be excused from the event.

“Your father never taught me how to tie these,” Krolia growled, and she decided to pull the knot apart and start over. “He never _wore_ these.”

“Smart man,” Keith mumbled. His mom pressed her lips into a hard line and sighed through her nose, and she straightened the fabric out the best she could.

“You don't even need it,” she said.

“No. I… I _have_ to wear it. Earth customs say I have to, to this kind of thing. Especially if they’re making me talk.”

Krolia snorted, and she didn't fight Keith when he took the tie to try again for himself. “Or what?”

“Or it'll look like I'm not trying. It's sloppy.”

“You _are_ trying, though,” Krolia said, frowning, and then it finally dawned on her in the right words. “You want to look nice.”

Keith wanted to claim that that wasn't the point--it seemed so superficial and unimportant next to everything else--but his cheeks burned and he left his answer open-ended. His mom sighed again.

“You're a paladin. Everyone's going to think you look nice no matter what you do. Now let's get going before we're late.”

The suit wasn't tailored for him. Keith felt it too tight in his shoulders and too loose around his ribs, especially as they walked down the hallway toward the Garrison exit. He kept tugging at it to try and convince it to fit better, but his mom insisted, “Stop fussing. It's just a party, and you look handsome.”

Handsome wasn't the right word. They had made an attempt with the tie, but he knew the knot was an embarrassing, crooked triangle. He hadn't done anything with his hair because there was nothing to be done. He was happy that his shoes fit, but he had already scuffed them. The wolf padded along beside them like nothing was wrong.

“I've never had anything to dress up for,” he admitted. “I've never worried about it, but everyone else… They've all done this stuff before.”

“And after tonight,” she pointed out, “you will have, too.”

“Keith! Krolia!”

Keith's head snapped around and his eyes locked onto Shiro, who was walking toward them from the fork in the hallway and practically glowing.

His black suit was tailored--it had to be in order to accommodate his arm. It complemented his broad chest correctly, and all of his angles looked sharp and professional. His tie was looped into a crisp, clean knot, and his hair was styled back. When he stepped in close, Keith smelled cologne.

“Here.” Shiro smiled at Keith and gave his tie a gentle tug. “May I?”

The entirety of Keith's face stopped working. “Uh-huh.” He stood at attention while Shiro coaxed apart the knotted tie, smoothed it out, and threaded it around itself. When he pulled it into place, Keith was busy trying to name the feeling of too much and too little weight in his knees.

“There.” Shiro's eyes crinkled when he smiled. “You clean up nice.”

Keith couldn't muster up any words at all. He must have taken too long to answer, because Shiro turned that sunny smile onto Keith's mother.

“Krolia, you look beautiful.”

She really did, and Keith found an affectionate pride in that. Colleen had helped Krolia select a long black dress and simple necklace, and she looked confident that she could still tear apart a stronghold in her delicate shoes. Keith had no doubt that she could. He just liked when his mom felt good about herself.

But that was a new kind of smile on her face. Her sense of humor was rare and thin, but it was like she was trying not to laugh at her own joke.

“Thank you, Admiral. Is your mother joining us?”

Keith caught the blink Shiro took after that question, during a split second to process it, and before his smile switched gears. Instead of bright and strong, he turned warm and soft. He was so much more than an admiral. He was a weary young man who had found his mother alive.

He looked _happy,_  and Keith’s heart ached with how overdue that was.

“Not tonight,” Shiro replied. “She’s resting. I hope you’ll both come and visit her later?”

“Of course,” Keith answered, no hesitation. “I’d love to.”

“When she’s ready for visitors, of course,” Krolia added. She rubbed one of the wolf’s ears when he nosed at her hand, and when Coran’s voice called for them from somewhere far down the hall, her eyes turned toward the source.

Shiro took a deep breath. He looked more excited than nervous. It was wonderful. He gave Keith one more smile, the softest and most personal yet. After everything, they were just going to a party.

“Shall we?” Shiro asked. Keith smiled back up at him and found himself tugging on his dark red tie.

 

* * *

 

Luca hadn’t improved in the last several hours. She wasn’t losing ground, but she had stopped improving, and that was almost as frightening. The human doctors were keeping watch on her brain activity, and the Coalition had installed a monitor for her quintessence fluctuations, and neither measure had changed much since that morning. Romelle took her seat beside the gurney and slipped her hand into Luca’s, and she gazed at her, weary and ashen.

“Thank you, Princess,” Romelle said faintly. As defeated as she appeared, dressing up had livened her up by the smallest fraction. Allura had only a few dresses to lend to her, and Romelle had picked the simplest one, knee-length and solid blue. She had left her hair down entirely, even taking out the braid. She looked more ready for a summertime walk than a gala, and Allura thought she looked lovely.

“If you need me, I’m only a tick away,” Allura reminded her. She pressed a comm unit into Romelle’s hand, and then she left her in peace.

 

* * *

 

The shuttle ride from the Garrison to the Embassy had Keith wiping his sweaty palms on the knees of his slacks. His mother sat beside him, the wolf at his feet, and Shiro, Allura, and Coran across from them. Pidge, Lance, and Hunk had elected to come with their own families, but they would all arrive in time for the beginning event.

“Oh, Keith, it’s only a speech,” Coran said. Keith knew he meant well, but he wasn’t helping at all. It wasn’t like they had told him last minute that he would have a speech. He might have been prepared, but he wasn't ready. “You’ve given plenty of those to your team before. All you have to do is make it exciting and hopeful enough to revive the spirits of everyone on your planet.”

“Thanks, Coran.” Keith’s voice cracked. “No pressure.”

“You’ll do fine,” Allura assured him. “This is part of being a leader. You’re better at this than you think.”

He really wasn’t.

“Why can’t you or Shiro say it?” Keith asked desperately. “You’re both great at this sort of thing.” He wasn’t trying to shirk his responsibilities. He was just being realistic. He would probably ruin the whole party before it started.

“The people have heard us before,” Allura reminded him. “They haven’t had the privilege of hearing you speak. Voltron leads the Coalition, and you lead Voltron. You have to make some kind of appearance.”

Keith sucked his bottom lip and stared at his knees, and he didn’t realize he was bouncing one of them until it stopped at the sound of Shiro’s voice.

“Keith.” Keith’s eyes darted up to Shiro’s face. His calmness wasn’t a stoic one, but gentle, and strive for it as Keith might, he doubted that he could ever truly emulate it. “You’ll be fine. You already know what to say.”

Did he? Keith worried his lip and hung his head again. His mother put a hand on his back, and its comfort was still a new thing to him.

“You can't sound any worse than Kolivan,” her dry humor told him. He cracked a smile.

 

* * *

 

The Embassy was a point of pride for Earth and the Coalition, and it shone with everything they had to offer. It stood as the hub of the city, and its doors stood open, letting in and out the gala’s overflow of guests from the building into the courtyard and the decorated streets beyond. Night had overtaken Phoenix, but the expanse of it was dotted with lanterns and streetlights like so many stars. There was food to go around; the Coalition had provided a little extra, enough to treat the battle-weary and rescued if only for one night, and beside seemingly every buffet table and food cart was another speaker extending the music of the string quartet from the Embassy ballroom. People were talking and laughing. They weren’t starving. They weren’t cringing in underground hideaways. They were out under the sky, dancing, losing bouquet petals and hair ribbons on the streets like confetti.

When Keith stepped out of the shuttle and onto the courtyard, followed by everyone more deserving behind him, the noise and chatter escalated. Too many faces turned toward him. A podium waited for him. The notecards in his hand were damp with sweat.

He wasn’t supposed to show fear, but his knees were trembling. At least the slacks fit him. They were the bottom half of his uniform. Hopefully no one would notice.

Hunk, Lance, and Pidge, and each of their families were already waiting toward the front of the crowd. Pidge shot him a wide-eyed, insistent look toward the podium, and Hunk gave him two thumbs-up. Lance just waited in the way a cat watches a dead bug to see if it will move again.

Allura touched his shoulder.

Shiro whispered, “Keith, focus.”

Keith took a single deep breath. The wolf’s nose bumped into his hand, and Keith gave him a pat on the head. When he took his steps out to the center of the courtyard, the wolf padded alongside him. He must have known Keith wanted him there, and no one could have told Keith to dismiss him. There were a few murmurs through the quieting crowd, but Keith took them.

He cleared his throat and left a calculated distance between his mouth and the microphone.

“People of Phoenix,” he started, and his voice held steady by some miracle, propped up by his overworking heart. He swallowed, and he feared that the microphone picked up the dry click of his throat.

“People of Earth. People of the Coalition--of the Balmeras, of Olkarion, of Altea. Of the farthest reaches of the universe. Many of you--of _us_ \--are from planets who suffered occupation under the Galra Empire for generations. Others came to aid those planets. Some even defected from the Empire itself. And as a community, we have accomplished something extraordinary. Everyone here has had to reach out to each other, to friends and strangers, and recover from the greatest tragedy in human history in order to make Earth a home again. To all of you who have worked so tirelessly in rebuilding the city of Phoenix, to everyone who brought supplies and food and medical care to our loved ones, and to everyone who made this night of community, peace, and hope possible, thank you. I’m humbled by your tenacity and generosity, and I’m so proud that Earth is the newest planet to join the Voltron Coalition.”

A wave of cheering applause found his eardrums, and a wave of nausea ran over the top of his head. He took another deep breath of familiar desert air.

“My name is Keith Kogane. I’m the-- I’m the Black Paladin. Which makes me literally the head of Voltron. I know that I haven’t made this type of public appearance before.” He had rehearsed this over and over in his head, and even reading it off of his notecards didn’t make it any better. He cleared his throat and picked at the edge of the wooden podium.

“I was born in a house a few miles from here.”

He stared at the notecard on the top of the stack. He shuffled it to the back.

“I am part galra. My mother is Krolia of the Blade of Marmora. Long before I was born, she was fighting to protect Earth and planets like it from the Galra Empire. She is here with me now, and she and the Blades make me proud of who I am. I know that the new influx of extraterrestrials is shocking and stressful to many, but in the past month, I have seen the most incredible acts of kindness between the people of this city. You have built each other up and helped each other grow. Many who came here from other worlds are settling here permanently, and humans and extraterrestrials find themselves neighbors. The cooperation, compassion, and diversity in this new community is what makes it flourish.” Another round of polite applause. His stomach turned.

“When I was fifteen, I was accepted into Galaxy Garrison. It was a rocky start, but I had a lot of help. The Garrison gave me the skills and training that I needed to become the pilot I always wanted to be. I got kicked out when I was seventeen,” he admitted with a shy laugh. “I know that’s been passed around lately. But it was more on me, and it was what led me to the team that has become family to me.

“Since then, the Garrison has become a testament to humankind’s determination, resourcefulness, and heroism. Now the Garrison offers the Atlas as the Coalition flagship, and the new home to the Voltron Lions, with Admiral Shirogane to captain it. You-- Galaxy Garrison, with Commander Holt, Commander Iverson, and the late Admiral Sanda, you fought an impossible fight. Voltron stepped in at the last minute, but you fought for three years. Truth be told, I feel like I don’t have the right to stand here and be the one talking to you. You are the ones who saved the world.”

Keith faltered. His eyes fell to the podium. It was scratched and unpolished, but its silhouette looked good from the crowd’s distance. Keith’s eyes followed a missing splinter along the surface before turning back to his script.

“The Coalition, the Atlas, and the Paladins of Voltron will continue our duty of freeing everyone under the Empire’s heel. The Empire was built upon hatred and fear, and today, it’s fragmented. The Coalition is founded on idealism, courage, and love. This is what being a paladin has taught me: there is no force more unifying than love.”

The courtyard and streets were too quiet, but he couldn’t scrape up the nerve to take a glance and make sure everyone was still there. He read off of his card.

“We are all pieces of many greater, stronger wholes. Every one of us has felt broken and alone at some point in our lives. You might not think your broken pieces will fit with others, but they will. I promise you, they will, and those bonds between you become a power of their own. This is what love does. This is what the Coalition is doing, and this is what Voltron has done for me. And each time that I’ve had the privilege of forming Voltron with the other paladins…”

Keith stared at that missing splinter on the podium again. Allura had kept telling him to look at his audience when he spoke, but he couldn’t. He talked to the splinter.

“It has always been love that held us together.”

He cleared his throat again. The silence hurt his chest. He spoke up one more time.

“It’s an honor to defend our universe with you. Thank you.”

He quit the stage as quickly as he could, the wolf trotting after him, and he made for the building. Applause followed him, and the music swelled back into place. He had thought he was safe, but then six pairs of arms intercepted him at the Embassy doors.

“Keith, you _wrote that_?” Pidge cried. Keith clenched his eyes shut, and he was pulled back into a hug that could only be from Hunk. Several more hugs fell into place with it, and Keith found himself surrounded.

“It’s okay, Keith,” Hunk professed, already choked up. “We love you too.”

“Holy crow, he’s blushing.” Even Lance was hugging him. Incredible.

“Stop looking at me,” Keith barked, face burning. Hunk whined and hugged him tighter.

“You said we’re your family!” Hunk was beside himself, and Keith felt guilty for doing this to him.

“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about!” Coran insisted. “These are _good_ feelings! You need to say them!”

His face cracked into a smile. The backs of his eyes stung, and Keith laughed and bowed his face into someone’s shoulder. It was Allura’s; her gown was soft on his cheek, and her fingers combed his hair back indulgently. When he looked up, the first eyes he caught were Shiro’s, smiling back at him, dark and bright all at once. Keith had never made Shiro cry before.

“I’m so proud of you, Keith.” His voice was rough with sincerity.

Keith’s smile widened until it broke open something warm in his chest. He ducked his head again and let himself sink into the hugs.

 

* * *

  

It came as a relief to Hunk that they didn't have to wear their uniforms. Despite celebrating the end of a martial occupation, a political alliance, and a series of military promotions, this was a party. He couldn't remember the last time he had been to one of those. Did Arus count?

The point was that after three years of occupation and war, uniforms were nothing new. Uniforms were everyday dress. And in a crisp white shirt and a pale gold suit jacket, Hunk felt presentable as more than an outfitted soldier.

As the crowd filed into the open Embassy doors, Hunk excused himself again from his family and braced the bouquet of daisies in his hands. While he looked for Shay, he found Pidge and Keith in the expansive ballroom by a buffet table. Sam and Colleen were talking with Matt and his fiance, and Pidge looked unusually happy to be in a huge room full of chatty strangers, just a few paces away from her family.

“Hey, Gunderson,” he said to catch her attention, and she grinned up at him. “Wanted to say, cute suit.”

“Thanks, Hunk. Not so bad, yourself.” She twirled an _hors d'oeuvre_ on a stick between her fingers. “This is actually kind of nice.”

“I think so, too. And I've never seen Keith dressed up before.” Hunk shot him a grin. “You look good, man.”

Keith didn’t know how to take the compliment. His eyes darted away, and he picked at the elbow of his suit jacket. Keith had absolutely refused to have a new suit made for him, so there was no telling what his borrowed clothes had been through, but he wore them well.

“Thanks,” Keith answered, stiff and awkward, but trying. “You too.”

“Lance is over with his family,” Pidge added. “Allura's off being a princess, and Admiral Shirogane got snatched up already. Neither of us are really dancers, so we figured we’d help out and make sure the food gets quality tested.”

“That’s a good goal for the night,” Hunk agreed. Something cold and wet touched his hand, and he jumped before looking down and seeing Kosmo. The wolf was seated beside Keith’s feet, looking up at Hunk and wagging his tail. Hunk’s face split into a grin. "And everyone knows, Kosmo is the real guest of honor.”

“He wanted to come,” Keith explained simply, and Hunk laughed. He knelt down and rubbed Kosmo’s face.

“Well, this won’t do,” Hunk said. “He’s not even dressed.”

“What?” Keith’s baffled tone of voice just made Hunk laugh again. Hunk held the bouquet of daisies in his lap, then reached up to his neck to unwind his bowtie. It took some adjusting, but Kosmo sat still while Hunk wound the gold fabric around his neck and tied it with a flourish. “Hunk, that’s _your_ tie. He doesn’t need it.”

“But he likes it,” Hunk said. Kosmo’s tail drummed against the table leg behind him, and he licked Hunk’s nose. Beside them, Pidge was dying of laughter.

“Dude,” Keith said with every ounce of his exasperation. Hunk just grinned and stood up again, holding the bouquet neatly in the crook of his arm.

“Well, now that your date’s all dressed up--” That earned him the _worst_ look on Keith’s face-- “have either of you seen Shay? We didn’t really plan on where we were gonna meet.”

Pidge gave him a crooked smile, pointed her eyes just past his arm, and nodded. Hunk turned around, and when he saw Shay making her way towards him, his chest filled with a breath.

She was adorable. Her dress was simple and sweet, and he recognized the style as something more traditional for Balmerans. The rings on her horns were decorated with a couple of extra jewels, and she had a shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

He stepped away from his friends to greet her, and he smiled and held out the daisies.

“Hi, Shay,” he told her. Simple and sweet suited them.

“Hunk! These are beautiful!” Shay brought the daisies to her face to feel the petals on her cheek. Hunk still wasn't completely sure if Balmerans had a sense of smell, but she seemed to enjoy the flowers all the same. “Thank you.”

“You helped grow them,” Hunk reminded her, but his smile was uncontrollable. Giving a girl flowers and seeing her face light up had to be the best feeling in the world. “The greenhouses probably wouldn't have made it without the crystals you brought. Now everything's growing so fast.”

“It was my pleasure,” she replied, and the exuberance in her voice made it even better. She couldn’t stop staring at the flowers. “You helped to restore my home. It’s a privilege to return the favor.”

“Then, can I ask another favor?” Hunk asked, holding out one hand to her. “I’d like to see the party outside the Embassy. I was hoping we could take a look around the city.”

Shay beamed at him and accepted his hand.

 

* * *

 

Diplomats were easy to handle. Allura flitted from one to the other, doing her part to host the event and keep spirits up. She took a turn through the streets and danced with the city’s growing population, and she took flowers out of her hair to give to the children who ran up to her. Clusters of people followed her back into the Embassy when she returned up the steps, and she introduced them to members of the Coalition--rebels and spies and cargo pilots who had fought for all of them. She watched some pair off to go and dance while others took seats along the courtyard stairs or found seats closer to the music, and she stood by the drink tables for a long moment, alone, just to survey what peace meant. A knot in her chest began to loosen.

She caught sight of Shiro stepping out of the dance crowd. When he thought no one was looking, he swiped his hair back from his face and downed one of the iced drinks, brow pinched with fatigue. She strode up beside him.

“Did you finally escape?” she asked him, catching his attention and making him grin. “It appears you’re in high demand tonight.”

“I don’t mind it,” he said neutrally. “It’s just nice to see everyone happy.”

“Are you having fun?” she asked him.

“I am. I forgot how much I like these kinds of things. Have you danced?” he asked her, and it wasn’t even an invitation. Just a conversation between two people who needed to tap out for a minute.

“Plenty,” she affirmed. “But I’m not quite exhausted yet. I think you’re wanted more than I am. I've heard a few of our guests debating over who will get to ask you next."

Shiro groaned in dismay, and Allura laughed.

“Well, if you’d like a change of pace, I have a few excellent dancers in mind.”

“Like who?” he laughed.

“No one has seen any of the Blades dance yet,” Allura noted. “Kolivan may make a good start. And I’ve noticed that Officer Leifsdottir is a bit shy. Perhaps you could encourage her.”

“I think I’d embarrass them if I asked,” Shiro admitted.

“Well, is there anyone you were hoping to dance with?”

“Not in particular.” Shiro studied the tablecloth and took another sip of his drink. He didn’t look like he would add anything else, so Allura narrowed her eyes and decided to prod at him.

“I’m told Slav is an excellent dance partner,” Allura informed him pleasantly. “His university was very supportive of the arts. You could say he has it down to a science. Oh, and there he is.”

Shiro’s eyes only widened by a sliver, but it made his whole face look desperate.

“Allura, _no_.”

“Shiro, yes,” she countered. She took his glass--he had no excuse to stay now that he had finished it--and turned him back toward the crowd. “The next song is starting. Attend to your adoring fans.”

 

* * *

 

Keith’s nerves were still winding down. Really, after the height of public speaking on the largest scale he had ever been subjected to, his nerves were _crashing_. His drink wasn’t nunvil, but oh, how he wished it was. Long after Pidge had ditched him to chase after Beezer, Keith stayed by the table and picked at the snacks, keeping his head down to avoid conversation.

“Hey, Keith.”

Keith’s back straightened so quickly that it popped. He found Matt in front of him and blinked.

“Oh, hey, Matt.”

“So,” Matt drew out, and Keith looked at him with an arched eyebrow. “You doing okay?”

“Yeah?” At least, Keith thought he was okay. Was he not supposed to be? He didn’t like the careful, sympathetic smile Matt had fixed on him. He had worked for an hour to stop feeling so self-conscious, and suddenly the feeling was crushing him. “What, is it my hair or something?”

“No,” Matt replied, but he still looked like he was measuring something on Keith’s face. “Just wanted to check on you. You didn’t look like you were having fun over here.”

“I’m fine.” Keith meant it, but he didn’t know how else to phrase it. It would have to be enough. It wasn’t.

“You sure? Aren't you gonna go dance?” Matt asked him, like he was reminding him of the whole point of the event.

Keith just swirled his glass and watched his drink ripple.

“I can’t dance,” he said.

“Hey, I can’t either, but that doesn’t stop me,” Matt laughed. “Do _any_ of the Blades dance? You guys look so gloomy.”

Keith smiled wryly and clarified, “I don’t have anyone to dance with.”

“Keith, I’ve seen like, six people come up and ask you.”

Keith shrugged and sipped his drink. His eyes didn’t stray from a point in the crowd, and Matt just had to follow his line of sight.

“Or you could ask someone,” Matt dared to say.

Keith set his glass down on the table with a tactile _clack._

“Go back to Vao, Matt,” he mumbled.

Matt sighed, and he wasn’t done with him quite yet. He put a hand on Keith’s shoulder, and Keith looked at him sharply from the side of his eye.

“Alright, man,” Matt said. “Just remember you can talk to me, okay?”

“Yeah.” The side of Keith’s neck felt hot, so he rubbed at it with a clammy hand. Matt finally left him alone, and Keith waited with his eyes locked on the floor for a while just to make sure.

He decided to migrate to his mother's end of the table. She knew when to leave a subject alone. Keith's only concern was that she looked to be enjoying herself about as much as he was, and when she glanced at him in greeting, he found himself repeating Matt’s well-intended question.

“You think you'll go dance?” he asked her. “Could be fun.”

His mom looked back out to the fluttering collage of dancers in the center of the room. Her arms were folded, and she looked much older when her face was so grim.

“The last person I danced with was your father.” There was no insecurity in that. Her tone was a decisive, unspoken, 'and it's going to stay that way.’

 

* * *

 

Earth had been decimated twice over, and with scarcely sixty million living humans left in existence, it seemed to Lance that the population could have fit in a dollhouse. It would have been harder to find someone _not_ on the guest list. The world was grey and grave, but no one in the Garrison was about to deny the harrowed planet a chance for celebration, and Lance was grateful.

Maybe Lance was a little guilty, too. This was the Coalition’s night, and his mind had reframed it as Allura's.

It couldn't be avoided. She was wearing white. Her dress flowed behind her almost as beautifully as her hair. Her half of the presentation hall was caught up in her radiance, and everyone who spoke to her was blessed with a smile that could stop and restart a heart. Lance stood at the edge of his own family crowd, and he couldn't help staring out at her and rocking up on his toes. He must have looked like an impatient toddler.

Veronica wouldn't leave him alone about it.

“You look like a sad puppy,” she laughed, drink in hand. “You're depressing me. Go talk to her.”

“What if she hates me?”

“Did Jenny Shaybon hate you?”

“Jenny Shaybon wasn't a magic alien princess.”

“Lance _, every_ girl is a magic alien princess.”

Lance took Veronica's drink out of her hand. “So why haven't _you_ asked any of them to dance?”

He didn't like that smirk on Veronica's face.

“Good point,” she crowed. “If you take too long, I might ask her for you.”

“Nope. No. Nuh-uh.” Lance unceremoniously dropped both of their drinks off at the nearest table, and he heard his horrible sister's laughter behind him when he found his way out of the safe bubble by his family. Allura was across the room, and so he steeled himself with a deep, fluttering breath and picked his way toward her.

He didn't have the presence of mind to work his way over casually. He just walked straight through like some guileless idiot, and with his motive so undisguised, he was terrified when Allura's eyes landed on him.

Please don't grimace. Please don't cringe.

Thank God, she smiled. He smiled back awkwardly and rounded the last cluster of people to meet her.

“Hey, Allura.” He was amazed that he remembered how to talk. She had done her hair without the usual bun, and it was loose and wildly regal. It looked soft enough to take a nap in. She was poised, her skin glowed, and her eyes were iridescent. His mouth felt dry.

“Hello, Lance,” she said brightly, like she was genuinely happy to see him. “Are you enjoying yourself?”

He wasn't. He was nervous enough to die.

“Yeah,” he answered anyway. “It’s awesome, seeing all the people who came together for this.”

“It's wonderful, isn't it? And Shiro deserves some recognition after all he's done.” Allura looked back through the crowd to the center of the ballroom, and Lance caught sight of Shiro taking a turn for a dance with one of the coalition dignitaries. He had been passed from hand to hand for the last half-hour, but he was still smiling. “Though it seems like he could use a break. I was going to send Coran to rescue him.”

“That's not a bad idea,” Lance laughed. He ended up clearing his throat. “Did, um. Did you dance with him?”

“No,” she replied. “I spoke with him earlier, though.”

“I haven't danced yet,” he said, and she turned those starlight eyes back on him. “I was--wondering, um. Hoping. If you wanted. If I could ask you for a dance?”

There. It was out. The band-aid was ripped off.

Allura smiled back at him.

“That sounds like fun.”

Lance wondered if that was a yes or not, and then Allura offered him her arm.

This was a movie. He was Prince Charming in a movie. He beamed at her, took her arm with all the poise his jittering nerves left him, and escorted her into the middle of the ballroom. A string quartet was playing, and Lance recognized the song but couldn’t name it. Allura rested her hand on his shoulder, and his own was given the privilege of holding her waist.

“Do you know how to waltz?” he asked her. There was no way that she knew, but she moved so confidently that he would have believed her if she said so.

“I’ve been watching for the past varga--hour?--and I may understand the basics,” she replied. Her other hand curled into his, thumb brushing his palm, and he almost fainted. He knew he must be shaking, and that she was probably too kind to say anything. “But you may have to instruct me on the finer points,” she said with a smile.

Lance forgot how to dance. He just didn’t have that skill anymore. It was impossible, because she was smiling at him like that. Maybe someday they could go on a date like this. He could ask her, and they would go together on a date, and she might smile like that again.

He cleared his throat and smiled back at her, and he had to trust his feet to carry him through this.

“Well, if I’m leading, first step is like this.” He guided her back and helped her through the motions. She picked up on it quickly, but she was still keeping a close watch on her feet.

“I see,” she said, and she let him lead her through another turn and repetition of the sweeping steps of the dance. “I like this song. The tempo and the three-beat rhythm. We had music very much like this on Altea.”

“What did you call it on Altea?”

“ _Yendrix._ The dance had the same kind of spinning motions. Oh!” She gasped when Lance raised her hand and suggested her into a spin, and she completed the movement and returned to him, laughing. “Yes, like that.”

“You’re a natural,” he told her honestly. “Can you teach me the _yendrix_ on the next song?” She was already glowing, but she just kept brightening up.

“I would love to. Thank you, Lance. Where did you learn to dance?”

“I was in theatre in high school. We had a musical unit.”

“You were in a musical production?” Allura laughed, moving smoothly through another spin.

“Lead role.” Lance grinned and allowed himself a little bragging. “Let me tell you, you haven’t known fear until you’ve danced on a table that three other guys are carrying around.”

“That’s an image.” Allura’s smile pulled up at one corner. “You should tell Coran. He would love to swap theatre stories with you.”

“I bet he would. But I’m having fun here.” Lance returned that small, mischievous smile, and he put both hands on Allura’s waist. She only had time to raise her eyebrows before he lifted her up. Her hands found his shoulders, and she let out a high, surprised laugh as he turned them halfway and brought her back down, setting her back on her feet. She was still giggling, holding onto his arms as they continued the steps of the dance.

“I am, too.” Her fingers curled on the shoulder of his suit, and Lance would never get enough of that sweet, radiant smile. She looked happy and relaxed for the first time in months, and he had been lucky enough to play a hand in that. He had to wonder if, maybe, she liked him back.

 

* * *

 

Lance wondered about this through the next three dances. After spending so many songs teaching each other different steps, surprising each other with elegant moves, and then stepping on each other's feet, they had each other laughing too hard to continue, and it wasn’t out of place for him to suggest that they take a breather outside. She walked with him, and it was alright that she wasn’t hanging on his arm.

When they stepped outside, the night was already cold and clean. The sky was rich with clouds, a rarity for Arizona, and they made the air sweet. Lance and Allura found a smaller courtyard away from the main doors of the Embassy where clusters of people filtered in and out, through another set of doors were it was more private. There was nothing in sight but the distant canyons cutting their shape out of the grey sky.

It _was_ a private spot. They seemed to realize at the same instant how alone they were, and eye contact became impossible. Lance rested a hand on the railing at the top step of the courtyard, leaving Allura a few paces of personal space.

“I’m having a lot of fun tonight,” he said quietly. Her answer was just as soft and a touch careful.

“I am too, Lance.”

He gave the eye contact a try. It came with an awkward smile, and she returned it better. Sweet. Nervous, but sweet. Lance gathered himself, but he couldn’t get the confession out without a faint laugh to carry it.

“I’ve wanted to dance with you for a really long time.”

He didn’t know what face she was making. Maybe it was the low light. Her posture looked tense, but was that apprehension or anticipation? Maybe he should just shut up.

“You’re a very good dancer,” she said.

“You, too.” A flutter of hope. Okay. He could do this. He rubbed the side of his neck where it started to feel too hot.

“Allura…” His voice felt too feeble to say her name. “Look, I… I don’t think this comes as much of a surprise, but I want to tell you something. I've been wanting to say it for a long time, and I feel like now is right.”

She was waiting for him, patient and confused. He swallowed the dryness in his throat and took the rose’s stem from his pocket, and he turned the flower in his fingers before he stopped himself from fidgeting.

“I think you’re wonderful.” His voice dropped lower in an attempt to mask the sting in the back of his throat. He felt sick, like his feet might rock out from underneath him at any moment, but this had to be said. “You’re brave and smart, and you’re always so kind. It’s humbling just to be a part of your team. You’ve always believed in me when I didn’t, and I just hope I can become the kind of man you’d be proud of. You've become… You're so important and precious to me. You're my friend, and…”

He owed it to her to look her in the eyes when he said this. He took a harmless step forward, holding the rose between them.

“Allura, I’m in love with you.”

The words sank into the cool air and left it saturated. Lance couldn't hear the music from the main doors or the city chatter anymore.

Allura was looking back at him with those sad, opalescent eyes. Her face fell. So did the pit in Lance’s throat.

“Lance,” she said too gently. Her hands came up to cup his, and she held his fingers shut around the stem of the rose. “I love you too. But not in the same way. I’m sorry.”

The withering ache of heartbreak wasn’t new to Lance, but this was the first time someone had looked him in the eyes and apologized for it. That made some part of it hurt worse. It made it that much more real.

“Oh,” he said hoarsely. She cared about him too. That was wonderful to hear. That was good news. His eyes burned and flooded, and he looked down.

He stepped back, taking his hand back from hers. The rose had probably gotten a little smushed while they had been dancing, but he couldn’t focus on it.

“Yeah, I… I just wanted to let you know. Thanks for hearing me out. I'll, um…”

“Lance.” She began to reach for him again and stopped. She drew back again, and before he could decide to bolt, she stepped toward the door. “It’s alright. Take your time,” she bade him more softly than he deserved. “Thank you for tonight.”

“You too.” His voice wasn’t regulating itself properly. It wobbled on an edge, and he fought it back into balance. “Have a good night, Allura.”

“Goodnight, Lance,” she answered faintly, like any of this was her fault. Lance kept his eyes down until she left and the door shut, leaving him by himself in the courtyard.

 

* * *

 

Pidge was happy to see her parents dance together. They were just as sweet and embarrassing as ever, smiling and laughing with each other like they were still falling in love after decades of marriage. She tried not to watch them directly from her spot at one of the tables, but knowing that they were enjoying themselves made the whole night better and brighter.

“Finally,” she sighed to Matt, who had just returned to the table after a dance with Vao. “All I've wanted for years was to have you three home safe.”

Matt smiled and took a seat next to Pidge, and he glanced toward their parents.

“Look at them. It's like their prom picture.”

“They're dorks,” Pidge laughed. “I'm just happy they're together again.” She took up her fork and began stacking pieces of fruit salad onto it.

“And when we deploy again,” Matt said, “we'll all still be together.”

Pidge's fork fell from her hand and clattered on her plate. The noise made Matt sit up straight and a few pairs of eyes turn their way, but Pidge was too busy sorting out his words to care.

“ _What_?” she demanded. “Who said anything about _you_ deploying?”

“I thought it was obvious,” Matt said like the idiot he wasn’t.

“Well, it’s not. You three are _not_ coming with me.”

Matt actually looked surprised, and it only made her angrier. “Did you think you were going to be the only Holt on the Atlas?” he asked.

“Yes! I should be!” She couldn’t stay seated. Her chair screeched under her when she stood, careless of it when her knees pushed it back, and she gripped the side of the table just to exert pressure on something. “I’m a paladin, Matt. I have to go. But you three? You need to stay home. You deserve to stay home.”

Matt followed her to his feet. When he touched her shoulder, she almost pushed him away.

“Pidge, we _are_ home.” She didn’t like that voice of his. He was too gentle and patient, a careful counterweight to her anger. “But not if you leave without us.”

They must have made a sight--a Paladin of Voltron, standing at a whopping five-foot-nothing, stomping her foot and fussing while her brother had to calm her down and keep her from ruining the party. She scowled up at him with stinging eyes.

“We just got everyone back safe,” she said. “Everything I’ve done, I did for this.”

Matt shook his head at her. He wasn’t supposed to look so sad. He was safe and engaged and _home_ , and Pidge hadn’t fought for so long just to let him have that sad look on his face.

Then he had the audacity to say, “We’re not going to sit and wait here while the baby goes off to fight a war.”

Pidge refused to cry in the middle of a party. She had been having _fun_. Tonight had been _good_ , and even if it was ruined, she wasn’t going to cry about it. She clenched her teeth and took a deep breath.

“I can’t let anything else happen to you,” she finally said, hating how weak she sounded. Matt sighed and pulled her into a hug, and her anger caved. She clung to him stubbornly.

“Hey,” he soothed her. “Nothing’s splitting this family up again.”

 

* * *

 

The ballroom looked too bright when Allura found her way back into it. The music had slowed down, at least, and its mellowness didn’t conflict too much with her own. She only wished that she could have called her night and gone to bed whenever she liked, but she would likely be needed until early into the morning. She sought out her most unfailing source of comfort, and she found him swapping stories with Sam by one of the long tables.

“Princess,” Coran greeted her. He masked most of his concern with tact, but Allura still picked up on it. She must have looked as worn-down as she felt. “Are you having fun? Where’s Lance?”

“He’s getting some air.” She avoided anyone’s eyes but kept herself tall and composed. “How is everyone here? Any dramatic culture clashes?”

“There was a minor misunderstanding when Commander Iverson asked one of the Mezrishi delegates to dance,” Coran allowed. “Apparently it’s an offer of marriage on their planet. I have no idea what they think the rest of this party is, if that’s the case. But everyone’s getting along well.”

“Some of the Garrison are still wary of the Blades of Marmora,” Sam added. “And our galra guests haven’t been eager to socialize. They’re going to have to warm up to each other eventually.”

“I’ll talk to Keith,” Allura sighed. “He’s in the best position to bridge that gap.”

“That’s if he’s not hiding in the bathroom,” Coran mumbled. “The last time I saw someone come up to him, I thought he’d faint.”

A beep from Allura’s bracelet stole her attention. She raised her hand to hear better over the ballroom chatter.

“Allura?” a high, anxious voice asked over the call, and Allura met Coran’s and Sam’s eyes, ending the conversation.

“Romelle?”

 

* * *

 

The courtyard step wasn’t a forgiving place to sit. Lance’s backside was starting to hurt, but it was still more comfortable than the thought of walking inside and facing anyone.

The doors at his back hummed and opened, and they let a little more light spill out of the building to cast Lance’s shadow over the steps. Whoever was walking out, Lance just hoped that they would ignore him. He sat as still and small as he could, and he waited for some confirmation that they were leaving.

Instead, someone padded over and licked the side of his face. Lance jolted and yelped, and he leaned back to see it was just Kosmo.

“Oh.” Smiling hurt, but Lance had to try. He rubbed the wolf’s neck and didn’t fight Kosmo off when he kept licking at his cheeks and nose. “Sorry, buddy. I’m not really in the mood to play.”

“Lance?”

And that was Keith’s voice, right behind Kosmo. Of course.

“Fantastic,” Lance mumbled. He scrubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm and ducked his head back down. “Keith, I'm really not up for it right now. Can you make fun of me later?”

“Why would I make fun of you?”

Lance started to scoff and laugh, but Keith's tone was serious. He stepped closer, and Lance saw his shoes out of the corner of his eye when Keith stood next to him, just past the wolf who was sitting patiently between them.

“Lance, what's wrong?” Keith sounded gentle--far more gentle than Lance had ever expected to hear directed towards him. He studied his knees, the creases in his dark slacks, and rolled the flower between his fingers. The petals were getting dull without water. He shrugged and cleared his throat.

“I told Allura, um…”

The desert wind dragged the thought out. Keith finished it for him:

“You love her.”

Lance took in another breath of dry air. He had been so obvious that even _Keith_ knew. His fingers traced the rose’s petals.

“Yeah.”

The silence lasted too long. It grated on Lance’s already shattered nerves. He saw Keith scuff his shoe on the concrete, and then Keith swung his leg forward to take a step down. He sat down several feet away from Lance.

“Well, at least you said something. That takes a lot of courage.”

“I guess.” Lance studied the rose and wondered why he had even bought it. Allura hadn’t wanted it, and it wasn’t giving him any comfort then. “I don’t blame her or anything, but it still hurts.”

Keith left his elbows on his knees, and they were quiet for a minute, save Lance's sniffling.

Finally, all Keith managed to gather together was, “I don’t know how to make it stop hurting.”

“You’re really bad at this reassurance thing,” Lance informed him.

“I know,” Keith growled, but he sighed and tried again. “Look. I… I know you’re hurting right now. But the long and short of it is that you and Allura do care about each other, and that’s what matters. She’s already part of your life. So you can’t let this stop you from being happy around her.”

That wasn’t a bad thing to keep in mind. Lance nodded and sniffed again, and he wiped at his eyes with one hand at a time. He wanted to put down the rose, but at the same time, he couldn’t stand the thought of letting it go.

“So hey, don’t tell anyone,” Lance muttered. “About what I told her, or that you saw me cry.”

“I won’t,” Keith said, and the quiet had room to settle in again. Keith ended up shrugging out of his suit jacket and throwing it over the stair railing. He had a black dress shirt on underneath, and he still looked stifled with the way he was tugging on his tie. Lance waited with the silence until his chest wasn’t clenching so tightly anymore and the pink rose was starting to look less like a weapon.

“I hate parties,” Keith mumbled. Lance snorted.

“Are those your uniform pants?” he had to ask.

Keith groaned and dropped his cheek into his palm. “Yeah.”

The wolf vanished from between them, and Lance saw another flash of light echo from the walls behind them. Keith glanced over his shoulder, sat up suddenly straight, and turned on his hip to look properly. When Lance looked back, he saw that it was just Shiro petting Kosmo in the doorway.

“Hi, Kosmo! Oh, you're so handsome in your bowtie,” Shiro laughed, rubbing both sides of the wolf's face at once. Kosmo's tail wagged hard and fast enough to drum on the courtyard step with each swing. Shiro looked up, and that smile turned toward Lance and Keith. “Oh, hey, guys. You okay?”

“Yeah.” Lance would have to work on lying; the answer still came as a weary, rushing sigh. “Just danced out, I guess. What about you?”

“Needed some air. So many people are grabbing my hand, someone might walk off with it.”

It wasn't funny, so Lance fought not to laugh. Keith didn't look like he had any such trouble. His eyes searched Shiro somberly, and then he turned back around to face forward, elbows on his knees. Shiro was still scratching Kosmo's neck, and his smile weakened, tentative.

“What about you, Keith?” Shiro asked. “Have you danced any?”

“It's not my thing.”

“Ah.” Shiro's smile faded out. He gave Kosmo one more rub on his ears, then stood up straight and scratched his jaw. “Well, it's nice to see you two talking. I'll see you inside?”

“Yeah.” Keith kept his eyes down, and Lance thought that was the end of it.

Allura’s voice cut through their comms and rooted them together. Lance and Keith were on their feet as soon as she spoke.

“Team, I’m sorry to cut the evening short,” she said.

“Allura, what is it?” Shiro asked. His back was straight and his face was formal, and Lance witnessed all of the day’s ease wash out of the three of them with only a handful of words.

“Everyone, meet in the medbay,” Allura commanded. “Luca is awake.”


	2. The Witch

Time and space were real. They just didn’t matter. When Honerva dropped through it, leaving only a whisper and a missed target for her son’s ally, neither did she. 

Harnessing this magic was a calculated surrender. All she had to do was accept that, at the end of it all, she meant nothing to the universe. She was a net zero as far as things ‘mattering,’ as was everything else--the magic she commanded, the plane it came from, and the universe itself, along with every universe beyond it. There was no great power that could judge them worthwhile, nothing set in stone to declare them ultimately necessary or important. Nothing was sacred. Manipulating this quintessence was accepting that she meant nothing at the same time she looked that larger power in the eyes, declaring that it didn’t, either. 

This level of nihilism was an empty feeling. It was too peaceful to be sad and too sad to be peaceful. A net zero, positive and negative swallowing each other whole. And it was far preferable to the emptiness in her chest in that moment.

Her son mattered. She could conceive of no universe where he didn’t. The Rift might not agree with her, but she couldn’t care less. Lotor was the only precious thing in existence.

And he had called her witch.

He had denied her, and rightfully so.

Her laboratory offered her physical safety and no comfort. She drew her shroud close around herself and let her sullen, lifeless mask fall into place. Everything was grey again.

She swept out of the lab and into the hall. She found her druids waiting for her.

“Emperor Lotor has been taken,” she said to them. “The Voltron paladins have betrayed him. Alert the Empire’s most faithful and have him returned to me. We'll begin searching immediately.”

 

 

Retracing the emperor’s steps took them back to a cold battleground in empty, open space. Between hundreds of broken Empire fighters, destroyed by Voltron, was the ship that Lotor had discarded before escaping with three of his generals. This was where Honerva had lost track of him, when he had severed her connection to one of his followers. 

Honerva stood on the bridge and watched her ship’s careful progress through the wreckage, and she listened to the sporadic hisses of airlocks over the comms and brief reports from her search team.

Nothing. Each section that was mapped out, nothing. The broad scans showed nothing. No signs of life. No trace of the emperor. At her side, Admiral Rohvan gave the order for the teams to move onto the next shattered vessel. He was tall, even for a galra, and the youth of his face belied the experience his scars spoke of. His left eye had narrowly avoided catastrophe between four broad claw marks, and he had lost half of his left ear in presumably the same fight. He was tenacious and loyal, and exactly what she needed him to be. She remained motionless, staring out at the graveyard of metal.

It felt like years before one of the team finally reported, “Admiral, I found something.”

“Give us visual,” Rohvan said. Honerva straightened her back and watched the screen take shape in front of them, and she took in the image from the agent’s visor.

Holding onto a beam of metal, exposed to open space and none the worse for it, was Kova. His tail flicked back and forth, and he blinked at the agent. He was an impatient little thing, and he had been waiting for a long time. Honerva’s teeth dug into the inside of her cheek, and she tried not to visibly wring her hands.

“Take him aboard,” she ordered.

The soldier did as instructed, but with less confidence than Kova would have liked. Still, the cat was reasonable enough to know that he didn’t want to stay in the shipwreck, so he climbed onto the arm of the agent’s suit and deigned to let himself be held.

When the soldier arrived back on the airlock, Honerva waited on the bridge. She couldn’t keep herself from staring at the door, though, and as soon as it opened and the soldier stepped inside, Kova hissed at him and clawed his way off of his shoulder. To the soldier’s credit, he tried not to drop him, but Kova leapt down and trotted to Honerva’s side. He planted himself beside her feet, and she soaked in this one small victory. She had one more member of her family.

“Keep searching,” she growled at the team. When she walked off of the bridge and directed herself back to her own laboratory, Kova walked beside her.

 

 

_Her laboratory on Daibazaal was bright. Cool and clinical, but bright. Kova was her shadow, and her husband made a daily ritual of visiting her at work. Today, she had called him closer to show him what she had been working on._

_“I don’t see anything,” he admitted, searching the display she had presented to him. She smiled and took his hand, and she guided it to her own belly. He froze beside her. His huge palm was reverently gentle where it pressed to her stomach._

_“I’m to be a father?” he asked. Happiness lifted his voice to the edge of laughter._

_Neither of them said 'finally.' She was too happy to see this light in his eyes to mourn the time it had taken them to get here. Smiling with all of the flutters in her chest, she replied, “Yes.”_

_“And you, my queen…” The love in his eyes was a gift that no one could deserve, but still he gave it to her. He had looked at her like this on their wedding day. “...will be the mother of the heir to the Galra throne.”_

_“Yes,” she said again, softer. This was their best accomplishment. She closed the bio-scan on the laboratory panel to check on the day's energy yield. "There is still much to do. We must continue to harvest and study this quintessence. It will give our son the greatest empire in history."_

_Her husband hadn’t let go of her yet. He kept his arms wrapped around her and his lips pressed to the top of her head._

_“He will be the best of both our people,” he murmured._

 

 

That had been their hope for him. They had loved their child before he had met them.

Honerva knelt on the floor of her laboratory. It wasn't the same vast network of shelves and chambers as her lab on the capital ship, but after Lotor had become emperor, she had been expelled from it. This hollow room on the cruiser that served as her temporary base would do for the moment. It was enough space for rituals.

She was seated on the floor. She didn’t bother to keep her back straight, but she hunched and let her head hang over her lap. Kova sat across from her, observing as he always did. That was why she needed him.

"Show me, old friend," she mumbled, already slipping into a trance.

Kova guided her through the journey. He recalled Lotor as far back as she bade him to.

Kova goes with Lotor when he is banished. All the prince has is a small vessel, a broken title, and a cat. Alone in the cockpit, days out from the capital cityship, he weeps silently.

The prince finds his “generals” one at a time. They leave behind the unsavory forces they command when he enlists them personally, but the titles stick. He recognizes their uses and knows the limits of their loyalty.

Kova isn’t there when Lotor finds the Alteans, but he is waiting when Lotor brings them aboard. The generals aren’t there. They don’t need to know this much.

Kova is the prince’s companion as, again and again, they travel through a nightmare to reach an oasis of safety. As if the route through the abyss isn’t dangerous enough, the prince leaves security drones throughout the debris. No one will find his project. His life’s work.

Homes are built in this little oasis. Crops are sown. A statue is built. Lotor is adored, as he should be.

A new ship is built. A comet is needed. Much more quintessence is harvested from the haven in the abyss.

The ruins of Daibazaal are a frequent stop for him. The prince has a team working on the remains. Kova watches from the side of a new general as the first pass through the gate fails.

Lotor doesn’t take Kova with him when he fells his general. The creature remains in the debris.

Kova had told her enough.

She knew where Lotor had been, and she knew where he had wanted to go.

 

 

_"What shall we name the boy?" he asked her in the blissful safety of their bedroom._

_Her husband was knelt before her as if paying fealty, cradling her hand in his much larger, much warmer one while she sat on the bed. In their many decaphoebs of marriage, he had always treated her as his empress. With the promise of a child, she found that both of them were more attentive and affectionate than ever._

_"I was thinking of a name with deep Altean history," Honerva said. She had been eager for this conversation, and she let it show in her voice. They had waited so long for a child, and they finally had the opportunity to name one. "Lotarius."_

_"Lotarius?" Zarkon repeated, and she almost laughed at the confusion on his face. It had none of the hallmarks of a traditional galra name, but she loved it._

_"He was one of the alchemists who built the technology used to create Altea," she elaborated. She reached out beside her to pet Kova's ears and listen to him purr. She had shared this story with Kova before, and she was surprised that she hadn't yet told it to her husband. "Our people had been nomadic for a millennium, and his work allowed us to settle and establish something extraordinary."_

_Her husband smiled. He always smiled when she talked about alchemy. It was how they had met, after all._

_"It's fitting," he agreed, and offered his own thoughts. "I was considering a name from Daibazaal mythology: Koltor. But he didn't build the worlds. He conquered them."_

_Lotarius. Koltor. Not incompatible. Honerva smiled._

_"Perhaps we can honor both traditions."_

 

 

_Honerva recognized the hospital when, yet again, she woke up in one of its rooms. She was too weak to move, but she tried. Her fingers twitched in an attempt to lift her hand, and that was usually enough to bring Zarkon’s hand to hold it. But he wasn’t at her bedside that time. She heard his voice from the doorway, though, and she pulled her dry, aching eyes open to squint past the lights._

_“She’s been declining for a long time,” the doctor outside of the room said. All Honerva could see through the doorway from her hospital bed was one corner of her husband’s shoulder. She watched it rise by half an inch. “So much exposure to alternate forms of quintessence has already taken its toll on her.”_

_“Can Altea help her?” Zarkon pressed. “The alchemists’ studies in quintessence are different from hers, but there must be something their healers can do.”_

_“I’ve already spoken to them. Sire, at this stage of things, they said it may be kinder to…”_

_“Kinder?” her husband spat. “Is Altea abandoning my queen because it’s kinder?”_

_She waited for the answer. There was a hurtful silence in the hallway, but she didn’t last through it before her eyes slipped shut again._

 

 

The door of the bridge slipped open behind her. She didn't look up from Kova, who was sitting on the main console and enjoying the scratches she gave him under his chin.

"High Priestess," Dezlok ventured. He spoke with caution, and she wasn't surprised. He had always been just slightly more perceptive than she wanted him to be. "Our latest reports from Commander Sendak are grim. The Empire is in a state of chaos. Outside of our few loyal factions, the warlords have turned to scavenging off of imperial territories. Our colonies have no oversight. Our infrastructure is collapsing, and the Blade of Marmora is emboldened while we're vulnerable. We need a strong leader."

"The Empire has a leader, Druid Captain Dezlok," Honerva answered coldly. 

"Priestess." Dezlok sounded awkward to the point of pain. "Emperor Lotor vanished over a phoeb ago. If he is in the rift as you say, it is impossible that he has survived for so long. And as he left no successor, we must call for the Kral Zera."

"There will be no Kral Zera," Honerva snapped. If Dezlok wanted an answer so badly, she would provide it through her teeth. "In Emperor Lotor's absence, the Empire is mine. Its commanders answer to me, and my druids control the Empire's chief quintessence supply. Admiral Rohvan will see to the deserters, and the druids will tend to the Blades. We will return to the capital-- _after_ Emperor Lotor has been recovered."

After a brief, reluctant silence, Dezlok answered, "Yes, Priestess."

 

 

_She woke up cold. The fabric draped around her was pretty and thin, made for decoration rather than warmth, but it was all she had. She clung to it, but her body offered no heat for it to catch. Her head hurt, aching and sluggish. Her fingers and toes hurt, stiff and cold. Her stomach hurt._

_She was on a slab. That couldn't be right. It made her back ache and her stomach hurt worse, and the whole room felt… bright? Dark? It was wrong, and she had nowhere to hide from it. Trembling, she slipped her legs over the side of the platform and found the floor. She meant to get up, but her legs slumped under her, and she resorted to sitting curled up against the slab with her shroud wrapped around her._

_She stayed there for a long time. It must have been hours before someone found her. The footsteps made her look up from beneath her shroud._

_"Who are you?" she mumbled suspiciously. The figure in front of her was imposing, tall and broad and dark, and his face was… perhaps frightening. She couldn't see clearly. He knelt in front of her, but her question made him stop short._

_"You do not recognize your emperor?" the figure asked. She couldn't discern whether the depth of his voice came from disappointment or anger. His voice was utterly unfamiliar. Everything was._ She _was._

_"Who am I?" she asked tentatively. If this emperor knew her…_

_His eyes were violet. They thinned into slits of light._

_He walked away from her without answering._

_She struggled to sit upright, and she crawled back onto the slab in time to watch him walk out the door. Moments later, a galra woman in a white uniform hurried in. A doctor. The doctor spoke to her in a soft, shaken voice, and though she flinched away at first, she eventually decided to let the doctor tend to her. She stared at the doorway the whole time._

 

 

_She was in pain. It radiated down her legs and left her heavy and helpless, but at least she was in bed. No one was asking her to get out of bed. No one could have asked her._

_"The birth was difficult," an unfamiliar but harmless voice said, "but successful."_

_Had someone had a baby? This dark, cold room didn't seem like a place for a baby. She wasn't sure that she could think of a single suitable place._

_She knew in general what a baby might need. She could imagine a nursery. Somewhere with sunlight and tall, regal decor. An untouched crib with the curtains drawn around it. She could imagine it, but she couldn't recall anything like it. That voice spoke up again distantly._

_“Your son is healthy and in good shape, though we’re getting some strange readings coming from him directly. Similar to… well, those of the empress, and yourself.”_

_She still felt sick. She thought that she had felt sick for a long time, but now there was closure. That closure might have brought relief, but instead it brought an unpleasant sound. Something small was crying. Something demanded comfort._

_She had nothing to give to it. She had no comfort of her own to offer, though she sought it for herself in gripping her blankets closer. She turned her face away from the foreign noise. There was a conversation at her bedside._

_“Take him away,” the emperor’s voice said._

_“But sire,” a meeker voice said. A technician, maybe._

_“I said take him away!” The emperor was usually impatient, but he sounded unusually distressed. Maybe this was about the emperor’s baby? When had he had a child? Where was the empress?_

_The crying faded away. She couldn’t bring herself to find that reassuring. She licked her dry lips and worked to focus on the conversation beside her._

_“And what of her?” the emperor asked the harmless one._

_“I’m sorry, sire. We have her under constant watch, but she remains in this state. She only seems to become aware when we administer her quintessence. I’m hopeful that her condition will improve with time, but sire, we’re going to have to face the fact that our quintessence supplies are finite. The Empire cannot continue to run on what we have. And you and the empress, without it, you’ll--”_

_The emperor cut him off._

_“Give me the room.”_

_She was left alone after that; everyone filed out of the room, save the emperor. She looked up at him when he stepped closer to her bedside._

_“Do you know who I am?” he asked her. It was a familiar question._

_“You are emperor,” she replied. She was in too much pain to give him more than a weary mumble._

_“And you are?” he prompted._

_She didn’t like that question. She frowned up at him in distress, hoping he would fill in the nauseating blank in her mind. He didn’t. He only tightened his jaw._

_“Do you know of quintessence?” he asked her then._

_Quintessence._

_She knew that, at the very least. It was a balm, and the only source of warmth and comfort that she knew. She repeated the word and felt a little calmer._

_“Can you find me quintessence?” the emperor pressed._

_She knew how to do that. It was everywhere; she just had to tear it out._

_“Yes, my emperor.”_

 

 

Empty space held the ruins suspended. Fragments of Planet Daibazaal hung in the void, and if the crew had dared to look deeper into the rubble, they would have found broken buildings--more than debris, but homes. Fossils of the Empire where it had begun. The palace where she had married her husband.

The ruins had nothing to do but float and wait. The crew sifted through them for a specific point.

Honerva knew where it was supposed to be. She had died there once, and she could still feel it--the shadows of it, if not the whole piece. Kova had shown her the gate Lotor had built on top of it, and…

It wasn't there.

It was gone. She could feel it, but it was gone.

At least, the wound had closed. The veil wasn’t scarred, tougher than the space around it, but a raw point in the universe. This injury had been open for ten thousand years, and such a weak, recent patch couldn’t cover its significance.

“High Priestess.” Beside her, Dezlok kept his voice low and inoffensive, as if he had to break the news gently. “We’ve been unable to locate any signs of life or remnants of Emperor Lotor’s vessel. The rift you spoke of, too, is nowhere to be found.”

“You’re not looking hard enough,” she informed him. It wasn’t even a critique of his work; he couldn’t have known. She paced further forward to the window of the bridge until she could brush her fingers across the glass, and she considered the hollow space before them.

The veil was thin there. Lotor had found it before, just as she had, and he had constructed a gate on top of it to stabilize an entry point. It wasn’t a self-respecting rift as it had been on Daibazaal, but it was a port, given the right vessel to traverse it.

“Summon Emperor Lotor’s engineers,” she ordered. “We begin construction of a new inter-reality gate immediately.”

“Priestess, would a new gate even allow one of our ships to pass through it?” Dezlok asked tentatively. “We have none of the ore required to craft such a vessel. On this side of the veil, the only ore from such a comet would be in Voltron.”

A good point.

An _excellent_ point, but not the one Dezlok was trying to make. Honerva turned her eyes curiously down to Kova, who looked back up at her with his tail curling back and forth. He was searching for Lotor just as she was.

“On _this_ side of the veil,” she agreed.

 

 

_Her laboratory was generously stocked, and it was built like a catacomb. She had been supplied with everything she could possibly think of wanting, except that it was never warm enough. The cold was a constant, and she had given up on shivering._

_The emperor visited her from time to time. She had been left alone for the first week after he had granted her the laboratory, and she had taken the time to acquaint herself with all of its devices and uses. She kept skimming her hands over the expanse of the console at the far wall, framed by tanks of samples the emperor provided for her. Chemical samples, geological, biological. The crystals were her favorite, and the ones that were cool enough to touch, she frequently cradled in her hands. For the first week, she just touched. For a while after the Emperor stepped up beside her, he simply watched._

_The emperor said a name._

_It didn’t sound like a name. She frowned and curled her hand tighter around the crystal in her palm._

_“Who am I?” She had wanted to ask him that for a while now, but she knew how strange it was._

_The emperor didn’t answer. She was aware of his presence behind her as she explored her new workspace._

_She listened to the door open again and didn't look up. The crystal in her hands was too lovely._

_"I beg your pardon for the intrusion, sire," a soldier said._

_"Proceed, Lieutenant," the emperor bade him._

_"Thank you, sire." The lieutenant cleared his throat. "My empress, we've received a new shipment of crystals for you. With your leave, we'll bring them in and store them however you wish."_

_Empress._

_Was there an empress? It certainly wasn’t her. What soldier would presume to speak to her that way? She was-- Certainly, she was above this lieutenant. She was the emperor’s…_

_His favorite?_

_Certainly not the… What had the soldier called her again? He was still talking at her, so she did the only thing she could: shrink into herself and growl under her breath._

_“You will not speak to her that way,” the emperor commanded the lieutenant. “She is my high priestess. You will refer to her by her title.”_

_Judging by his voice, the lieutenant shrank smaller than she had._

_"Of course, sire. My deepest apologies, High Priestess."_

_The lieutenant left the laboratory, and she continued to map out her laboratory. The emperor only remained for another moment, stretched longer to wait for something that didn't happen. Then he left silently._

_It wasn't long after that a couple of guards passed by her laboratory door. Their voices were hushed in the hallway, but she could make out every word._

_“They’re terrifying,” she heard the soldier murmur. “The emperor… He’s nothing like before. And she’s so haggard. She’s still wearing her shrouds.”_

_Shrouds. She pinched at the fabrics draped around her without looking at them. They did shroud her. They held her together._

 

 

The veil.

Honerva had seen the other side before. Where the void of space was infinitely empty, the rift was overflowing. It was nothing but full, teeming with energy and potential and just the kinds of mysteries that would have captivated her in another life.

For the past ten thousand years, she had been speaking to the other side.

She had whispered to it, but she hadn’t touched it since that other life had ended. The gate would change that.

Dezlok had been right; they didn’t have any of the trans-reality comet’s ore, and she couldn’t pierce the veil without it, no matter how much stolen quintessence she might brandish against it. Fortunately, they didn’t need to pierce it. With the gate in place, all they needed to do was talk. She just had to call a little louder.

Again, Kova would be her guide. He was her only friend, just as he was Lotor’s.

To perform the ritual, Honerva banished everyone from the observation deck. The cruiser was inert, suspended in place above Daibazaal’s grave, with the observation window facing the new inter-reality gate. Kova sat with her on the deck. The crew waited below in the control room, anxious for her next order.

She sank herself into the trance, and Kova knew to follow her.

Location was a strange thing in the rift. She still couldn’t be sure that things like time and space applied. If she were to search for him in the sea between realities, it wouldn’t take long to find him. If he was the only thing in the oversaturated void, he would be drawn to the only other point of context in it: the door out.

They had crafted the gate for him. All that was left was to lead him to it.

It was like looking through rough layers of ice. With her eyes shut, she reached out for the gate and met that wall of ice, the other side obscured almost entirely by distortion and coruscation. The ice didn’t care what magic she used; it wouldn’t harbor her. She couldn’t get through. Echoes would have to do. With Kova as the link, she sent out a pulse.

Nothing. She took a gasp of breath and tried again, stronger.

Kova growled anxiously. Something rippled behind the ice.

Honerva clenched her teeth around spacetime. Disrupting that net zero of reality was draining. The universe took offense, but it would have to suffer it until she had called her son home.

The ice turned dark. Something behind it blotted out the light.

Her hands curled into fists. She reminded the universe that it wouldn’t be whole until it had its prince back. The pulses beat through her skull, her nails scratched at the floor, and Kova yowled, upset but unharmed.

The ice burst into light.

Honerva looked up with wide eyes to the window. The spell had done all it could, and she let the drumbeat of it slough off of her while she watched the gate. Kova’s tail thrashed back and forth.

Debris floated through the light.

She put a hand over her mouth and stared.

The gate brightened, and a larger shape broke through.

His ship was in splinters. A field of fractured metal followed the bulk of it through the gate and out of the energy flow, and any flickers of light across it died as soon as the vessel was out. Whatever the technology it had used, the material knew how to travel through the gate.

She knew it was his ship. It had been beautifully designed, and only something truly monstrous could have taken it apart like this.

Her son must have fought very hard.

The ice in her stomach spread to her fingertips. She couldn’t sense him. She reached out with her energy and found nothing familiar.

But there it was.

A flicker.

She couldn’t say that it was familiar. She might have known the language, but not the word. The colors, but not the artwork. The structure was all wrong.

That flicker burned brighter, aggravated by her presence. The helmet of the elegant mech cracked open around a dark glow.

She opened the comms to the control room.

“Rescue pod and salvage teams,” she barked. “Get to work.”

 

 

_The emperor’s hall was made of harsh lines and empty space. The high priestess had a spot reserved at his right hand, and she was content to stand beside his throne as he held court. Whenever she had meaningful counsel to offer him, he paid her heed as he did no one else. Their current visitors were special, and though the emperor couldn’t be accused of showing either of them affection, they received a level of tolerance and favor that no one else but the high priestess enjoyed. Before them stood the young prince and his governess._

_Dayak was a tall, imposing woman with a thin face. She was young but accomplished at the universities, had encyclopedic knowledge of the Empire’s and of Daibazaal’s histories, and conducted herself with unforgiving fidelity to the highest standard of etiquette. She spoke with a courtly accent, no doubt a university carryover, and it was infecting the young prince._

_He seemed little more than an infant. She had only seen him a few times before his schooling had begun. Up until that point, he had spent most of his time properly tucked out of sight, crying on his nurse. He had been a terrible, disdainful baby, but he had quieted down as soon as he had learned how. He stood with his head bowed in respect, anxious to please._

_“Dayak,” the emperor ordered, “update me on the prince’s progress.”_

_“Yes, sire,” Dayak reported. “Prince Lotor completed the Agotian Trials as you requested. He was successful, even though they were advanced for his age.”  This was praise for him as much as it was for herself. Tutoring a child to be so clever was a great accomplishment._

_“What else?” the emperor asked, unsatisfied, so Dayak continued._

_“His physical stature is below expectation for the blood lineage of the Galra royalty,” she allowed, “but his tactical scores are the highest we’ve ever measured.”_

_The child prince raised his head politely. He recited the words that had been handed to him daily since his birth, and with admirable sincerity._

_“All I do, I do in the name of Galra.”_

_It sounded like a plea for attention, or maybe an apology for being so small and disappointing. She couldn’t guess the thoughts of her emperor, but his unimpressed silence was too much for the little prince to bear._

_“Father,” the prince hazarded, “there’s a question I’ve been wanting to ask you.”_

_Dayak stiffened visibly and hurried to correct the blunder._

_“Greatest apologies, sire,” she bade the emperor, and she cast a draconian glare down at the child. “This one should not be speaking out of place.”_

_The emperor surprised them all with a curious but stern, “Proceed.” The prince puffed himself up; his face brightened at the slightest acknowledgment, but he took this rare opportunity for what it was._

_“I would like to know more about my mother,” the prince pleaded. Ah, that was a bold one. The high priestess took a curious glance at the emperor without turning her head. It had been ages since the last unfortunate fool had made a comment about the empress. “Please, father. What happened to her?”_

_The emperor took the question more graciously than she had imagined._

_“I will tell you this and no more,” he stated. His voice was careful and even. “She was my only weakness. But now she is gone.”_

_That startlingly personal, vulnerable confession from the dreaded emperor wasn’t enough for the little prince._

_“What was her name?” he begged. “What was she like?"_

_“Enough,” Zarkon warned him._

_“Please, Father.” Lotor was a desperate beast, but he would have to learn his limits. “I must know who I come from.”_

_“_ I said, enough! _”_

_The prince didn’t flinch when the emperor shouted. His eyes didn’t glint with tears. He sucked his lip and bowed his head again. The emperor turned his attention back to the governess._

_"It seems that after all his lessons, the prince still has room for questions,” he said through his teeth. “Fix that."_

_“He will be punished accordingly,” Dayak vowed. The prince’s conduct had been a failure on her part, and it wouldn’t happen again. “Vrepit sa.”_

 

 

_The prince had since grown into an ambitious little monster. He wasn’t allowed to venture outside of Dayak’s strict schedule, but the scope of his lessons had expanded. He learned in his governess’ classroom, sparred with the emperor’s best officers, and began his flight training. He had begged his father to allow him lessons in engineering as well, and he gained the privilege of requesting his own reading material. He was to learn everything, as well as observe when the emperor held court. The high priestess remained at the emperor’s right, but now, the prince had his own place at his father’s left._

_“Sire,” the latest messenger said with a deep bow before the dais, “your audience is requested in the Kandar Wing.”_

_The emperor acknowledged the request by standing. His incorrigible son had to pipe up: “Father, may I accompany you?”_

_“You will stay here,” the emperor decided coldly._

_“But I want to join you,” Lotor protested. “I have learned much of our--”_

_“You are an insolent boy,” the emperor snapped, and the change in the prince was visible. He reduced himself where he had begun to stand too tall, and he shut his lips tight. “You may be the prince, but I am your emperor.”_

_With that reminder, the emperor swept off of the dais and out of the throne room. The priestess was left with the sulking prince._

_The cat crept out from behind the throne once the emperor was gone. The creature had followed her around for decades. It was a strange companion that she couldn’t bear to part with. He wound around her skirts with a small, rumbling purr, and then made his way in front of the throne to investigate the prince. It had taken him a while to get acclimated to Lotor, but he must have finally warmed up._

_The prince knelt down. The priestess saw a smile on the corner of his mouth, and he held out a hand to the cat, probably eager for a distraction after being scolded._

_“Do not touch him,” she advised him. “He will hurt you.” The emperor probably wouldn’t care if his brat earned himself a few scratches, but all the same, it fell to her in the moment to keep an eye on him._

_The prince heartily ignored her. He reached out and pet the cat’s ear._

_Of course the cat took to him immediately. He purred and nuzzled the prince’s hand, much to his delight._

_“What is his name?” Lotor asked, handling the creature gently._

_“He has no name,” she said. It was a familiar concept._

_“Then I shall give him one,” the prince decided, and he proceeded to speak directly to the cat. “Your name will be…”_

Kova _._

_It would have been unbearable to hear him called anything else._

_“Kova,” she spilled out, surprised at her own desperation. “His name is Kova.”_

_The cat climbed onto Lotor’s shoulders and made itself home there, nestling into his hair. The prince laughed and continued to pet it, enamored with its soft face and affectionate manners._

_“I like Kova,” he decided. “I’m going to keep him.”_

_Kova wasn’t the prince’s to take. Her protest welled up before she could bite it back._

_“But my lord…”_

_It wasn’t well received._

_“You may be the high priestess,” he told her curtly, “but I am your prince. You answer to me, hag.”_

_What a horrible child, cooing to her cat. She wore the scowl that felt familiar to her and tried not to let it deepen._

_“Of course, sire,” she said bitterly._

 

 

Her son had found a beautiful spot. The colony was as idyllic as it was troublesome to reach, and despite her druids’ suspicion and thinly-veiled protests, she ventured out from the flagship alone, leaving it in the admiral’s faithful hands. The ship had docked miles away from the colony, and Honerva finished the journey in a small pod to avoid attracting attention.

She left the pod outside of town and continued on foot. The fields came into view first, peopled sparsely by workers with baskets. They hardly glanced up when she walked over the dirt road between the rows of crops. At this distance, no one looked closely enough at her to be startled by a stranger.

The houses were next. They were simple but technologically elegant domes that spoke of assistance from outside of the colony. A man wove baskets on his front porch. A woman hung laundry out to dry. There was no evidence of any kind of spaceflight, or even vehicles that went beyond wagons.

She had never seen Alteans landbound before. It was unsettling, like watching fish on land gasping for breath, but these colonists didn’t even know what they were lacking. Perhaps some of the Alteans Lotor had rescued had told their descendants stories of their people’s origins, but those stories must have washed out through the generations. She could feel it: these people didn’t understand the first thing about their history.

The colonists started to notice her and not recognize her. She ignored them, but their murmurs followed her until she reached just what she was looking for.

Lotor’s statue was a bold statement in the core of the colony. His likeness was heroic and beautiful, and she studied it, standing on the platform at its feet.

The colonists didn’t receive visitors well. After so long in isolation, Honerva could hardly be surprised.

“This location is a well-kept secret,” one of them called to her, already accusing. “Who are you?” Several others hung behind her as a crowd began to form. None of them had weapons. There would have been no need for them. She turned to look out at them, and she was sad to find herself underwhelmed.

“I am Honerva,” she told them, “of the planet Altea, wife of Zarkon, and mother to Lotor.”

They sounded like they had never protested before and didn't quite know how, but Lotor's docile flock started to speak up in confusion.

“How is that possible?” the woman at the front pressed. Honerva liked her. “Altea was destroyed ten thousand years ago. And Lotor, son of that monster Zarkon? You're mad."

“It seems there is much that my son hasn’t told you. But I can see what lies he may have fed you, he did so to protect you.”

The anxiety on their faces was fascinating. This was a small, isolated community with a living god. They had never had their faith challenged before.

“The truth is that Lotor is the Emperor of the Galra, after his late father. It is clear why he wanted to protect you from the tumultuous situation the Empire finds itself in presently, but you must understand the complexities of his efforts. He has hidden you from the Empire as he has hidden it from you. There will no longer be a need.”

"And why are you here to tell us this instead of Lotor?" another man called.

“Lotor had formed an alliance with the Lions of Voltron,” Honerva told them. “Voltron has betrayed him. When Voltron attacked your sister colony, Lotor fought to defend it. However, he was defeated by the paladins. The colony was lost, and now, his condition is grave. I will need your help to save him.”

The crowd received this as well as was to be expected. There were cries of dismay, hands clasped over mouths in shock, and many of them began to weep.

It was gratifying to see. While her heart had been asleep, this world had loved Lotor for her. Of course they grieved for the fictitious second colony as well, but Honerva knew nothing could matter as much as Lotor.

“While Lotor is in his current state, I find myself the steward of the Galra Empire. Zarkon is no longer to be feared. I and my son will resurrect the age of peace and prosperity that was always due to Altea. You will find Galra soldiers aboard my ship. This will doubtlessly disconcert you as well as them, but these are necessary growing pains. I will protect you from Voltron should they come for you next, and we must _all_ work together to bring about my son’s dream of peace. Will you help me?”

 

 

She returned to the flagship while the Alteans were still preparing their exodus; the cityship certainly had room for all of them, but she would have to make that clear to her crew first.

“The Alteans are coming aboard,” she told her chief officers, who waited for her in the open docking bay. “All of them. They are our comrades now--our soldiers. Treat them as you would treat wards of your emperor.”

“Yes, Priestess.” Admiral Rohvan gave a short bow with his hand clasped over his chest, and he immediately turned to his own men and several of the ship’s crew. “You heard her. Let’s run another sweep on our friends’ new quarters, and let’s have food ready in the galleys. I wanna see everyone playing nice.”

“Admiral,” one man said, back straight and voice formal. “May I speak?”

Rohvan’s yellow eyes flashed toward him. “Granted, Lieutenant Kaloz.”

“Sir, these are _Alteans_ ,” the lieutenant felt the need to emphasize. Honerva’s attention moved back to the admiral, and she let him handle it.

Rohvan stared a hole into the soldier and clicked his tongue. The men on either side of his target took subtle steps farther away.

“I know,” the admiral said pleasantly. “Aren’t you excited? We’re the first Galra to crew with Alteans in over ten thousand years. We’re making history. I’m sure we have so much to learn from each other. But try to contain your excitement, Lieutenant. You’ll overwhelm our guests.”

A couple of the officers hung their heads to hide smiles. Kaloz cleared his throat and nodded in a short bow.

“Understood, sir.”

“Good.” Rohvan raised his chin and surveyed the room again. His smile was gone, and his yellow eyes had gone sharp. “If any of our guests are hurt or harassed, the soldier responsible gets fed to the druids. Don’t make an example of yourselves. Now that that’s understood, let’s give our Alteans a _very_ warm welcome.”

He was taking the Altean situation in stride. He had made one single expression of surprise during the mission briefing, and he had asked precious few questions since. He hadn’t protested once. His men were following his example well.

Druid Captain Dezlok seemed somewhat less eager to please her. He wasn’t stupid enough to argue with her, but his pointed mask was sullen and bowed, and he had been less vocal in his fretting lately. That was a bad sign. Honerva let her eyes linger on him, and then she continued past the bay and into the ship.

 

 

_“Priestess.”_

_The emperor’s voice was a rumble across her laboratory. She had come to expect these visits from him, and she raised her head respectfully without looking from her work. It was a pet project, maybe, but the emperor had given her ample supplies to do whatever she liked in her lab, including entertain herself. The little device on her work table wasn’t anything useful--simply a small stand with an eternally spinning ball orbiting the top of it, a display of the near endless energy that quintessence emitted. It wasn’t even a toy, and it was dangerously close to being classified as art, but… She wouldn’t call herself fond of it, but she wanted it there._

_“My lord,” she replied. She listened to his footsteps as they found her side._

_“What are you working on?” the emperor asked, as he sometimes did. Sometimes he had more specific assignments for her. Otherwise, he trusted her to direct the work in the laboratory as she saw fit._

_She didn’t know how to answer. She didn’t want her lord to think that she was wasting his resources, but she finally replied, “I’m not certain.”_

_He didn’t scold her. He stared at the little kinetic sculpture for a long time without speaking._

_“The prince has found a companion in that creature, Kova,” the emperor remarked. It sounded remarkably like smalltalk. “I’ve allowed him to keep it. I wonder where he found that name.”_

_“I couldn’t say, lord.”_

_The emperor was silent again, waiting._

_“Do you know who you are?” he asked then._

_It was a quiz he kept giving her, as if she hadn’t always been High Priestess. By this point, the question was closer to a meditation. Like an inside joke between two people without any sense of humor._

_But this time he spoke with a particular, delicate quiet. She had to weigh her answer with care._

_She always replied, ‘High Priestess, lord,’ or ‘your servant, lord.’ Was there anything else to call herself?_

_Hag._

_What a horrible child._

_Haggard._

_It scratched at… something. Some sense of identity. Not a title, but a name._

_H..._

_She formed the letter with her mouth and sighed it._

_The emperor took in a sharp breath and straightened his back. His hand found the edge of her work table. She raised her eyes to him, enraptured by such an impassioned reaction._

_Hag...her… Haggard… Hag._

_Hag, hag, hag._

_Hon… hag… er…_

_It felt familiar, like a shroud. It was inelegant enough to suit her._

_“Haggar?” she guessed._

_The emperor held still. His hand fell from the table. She felt that she had given him the wrong answer, but it was the true one, and it was too late to change it._

_“Very well,” he said. He turned and walked out of the laboratory._

 

 

The Alteans had settled in well, if apprehensively. They and the Galra soldiers stared at each other for too long at a time in the halls and at meals, but Honerva and Rohvan were enforcing peace. It was clear that there would be no tolerance for bickering. If there was anything Rohvan hated, it was infighting.

The flagship had made it out of the abyss, and Honerva had made her rounds. She checked in on the Alteans. She checked on her son. Then, she settled back into her laboratory. It had become her home, and she ran her fingers over its shelves fondly. She had even let her mask fall, though she left her hood up.

Her druids found their way into her laboratory a few at a time. They didn’t speak, but she could feel them collecting in the open ritual space behind her.

Well, it would have only been a matter of time before this happened. Maybe Dezlok _was_ that stupid.

“Priestess,” Dezlok said behind her. It was odd to hear anyone take such a disapproving tone against her, reproachful, yet afraid of the consequences. She wasn’t surprised, though. He had been on edge since she had taken the colony aboard. This time, she didn’t bother even to summon her mask. “This is too much. Emperor Zarkon would have--”

“Do _not_ ,” Honerva spat, “presume to tell me what Zarkon would have done.”

“This is not what you taught us,” Dezlok protested. “Everything the druids did, we did for the Galra Empire. To harbor Alteans-- This is treasonous.”

Honerva laughed. Her throat cracked, sore and poorly adjusted to making that sound, but she laughed belly-deep. The druids would be no great loss.

She turned to face him and tore back her hood. She threw the shroud at Dezlok’s feet.

“Do you mean to call Emperor Zarkon a traitor?” she sneered.

Her druids fell into chaos. Most of them gasped and tripped on themselves in their hurry to back up. Some stayed admirably still, stunned, absorbing the scene.

“I am Honerva,” she announced to them, and the pride in that declaration made her heart roar. That was the name Zarkon had loved. “I am the wife of Zarkon and the mother of Lotor. I raised all of you from the bottom of the army’s ranks and gave you power you still fumble with. I taught you everything you know, this sickly caricature of real alchemy. Everything you are, you owe to an Altean. If you recognize me as your teacher and the rightful leader of the Galra Empire, stay and be rewarded. If you abandon me now, heavens help you.”

The space of a heartbeat held the laboratory suspended. Then Dezlok moved.

There were sparks at his fingertips. He had studied this art for centuries under her guidance, and he was still so clumsy with it. Honerva raised a hand and caught the energy he summoned, and she stopped it short before he could let it loose. It pooled around his hand and exploded. The shock tore right through him, and when he fell, the rest of the room burst into motion.

Many of them came to her side. Whether it was out of genuine loyalty or simply good decision making, she was pleased with each of them. The rest of them either fell back in wisps of smoke, or they were taken down by their betters. The upheaval in the chamber cleared quickly with only scorch marks on the wall to speak of any ill.

The shouting in the hall was almost comical, but she was pleased to see that her soldiers responded so quickly to the sounds of a fight. The door opened, and Rohvan and four of his officers spilled through, rifles drawn.

“High Priestess--” The admiral stopped short and stared. His eyes darted from her, a form just familiar enough, down to the shroud on the floor, and back up to her. Her funereal clothes, pointed face, and long white hair must have been familiar, and the druids loyal to her gathered around her protectively. He was a hard man to confuse, but she had managed it.

“You would have known me as Honerva,” she corrected him, “Altean alchemist and wife to Emperor Zarkon, had my husband not written me out of history.”

He would have found out sooner or later. Honerva faced him and gave him a chance to react properly.

His moment of realization was so slow and careful that she could see the gears turning in his head. Zarkon had kept her at his side for millennia. She had served the Empire longer than any of these men had been alive, and he knew it. Finally, he lowered his gun and dropped to one knee. His men followed, motions jerky with confusion, but they were nothing if not obedient. If they wouldn’t follow her, they would follow their admiral.

“Empress,” Rohvan corrected himself, winded with amazement.

Smart man. He had always been a loyalist.

 

 

_It was a verdant planet. Not nice, but verdant. It was too green and lush to be humble, too proud of its own idylls to have cared to strengthen itself. It had fallen easily to the Empire, and the emperor considered it a pathetic, simpering little resource._

_She wondered if that was why he had given it to the prince. It wasn’t a challenge, but an insult. Still, the emperor deigned to visit after a brief decade to check on the prince’s work. The city was surprisingly intact, and she pondered over that while she stood at the emperor’s side in Lotor’s city hall. It was a softly shaped structure, bright and flowery, as if it feared offending anyone with a hard edge. Too much of this saccharine air would make her gag, but the prince had made himself right at home._

_“Update me on your progress,” the emperor said. He stood in the balcony doors of the atrium with his back to the prince and his guest, both kneeling. It was a wonder that Zarkon had even allowed the prince a local guest in this meeting, as if the natives should be allotted a representative, however silent._

_“Our quintessence yields are some of the highest in the Empire,” the prince was quick to announce, “and we’ve been more efficient than any other.” He was nervous. Sincere, proud, but nervous. His even-keel voice was already just a little too careful, as if he had something to lose in this florid little dollhouse of a world. “By working alongside the denizens of this planet, like Ven’tar, we’ve outsourced labor that would have otherwise fallen to the Empire, and we remain self-sufficient. The model that we’ve implemented allows us to remain productive without relying on any support or maintenance from the Empire.”_

_“I’ve seen the numbers,” the emperor said dryly. He was still looking out onto the garden below the balcony, and the priestess wasn’t sure what he saw there. He didn’t seem to feel anything, until he spoke again. “Instead, explain to me why you think this impudent, unpatriotic pustule is an appropriate template for an imperial colony.”_

_Lotor froze, but only for a moment. He rose to his feet and proceeded cautiously._

_“Because it’s working,” Lotor insisted. The prince was still trying to speak the language his father had taught him instead of the one he spoke. “We have outpaced even the most generous projections.”_

_“You are coddling your subjects,” Zarkon growled, turning around to stare down at his son. “Do you think the Empire has kept order for thousands of years by catering to all of its workers? Leave your serfs their pride, and they will become rebels. What’s next? Don’t tell me this Ven’tar is an_ advisor _to you.”_

_The prince got that bitter look on his face. The years had only made him smarter, and beyond that, they had made him more stubborn._

_“It is the way my_ mother’s _people would have done things,” he said coldly, clearly, as if he was savoring each bite of finally saying that to his father._

_It must have been something to savor. It struck Zarkon like lightning, and he stared at the prince in livid shock._

_“You thought I couldn’t find out about my own mother?” Lotor had to continue. “About her people?”_

_“You wish to speak of Altea, boy?” It was the closest that Emperor Zarkon had come in a century to laughing, and he spat the words out. “What charming little fantasy have you invented of it? Do not think their hands were innocent just because they couldn’t stand to bloody them.”_

_“Do not blame the Empire’s atrocities on allies that_ you _betrayed,” Lotor snarled. “Would you feel less ashamed if you had managed to destroy every reminder of Altea around you? Is that why you hate your own son?”_

_“Enough!” Zarkon’s voice boomed through the atrium. Behind Lotor, Ven’tar flinched. “You are to correct this callow mistake of a planet.”_

_"There is nothing to correct!" Lotor shouted back at him. "The Empire can be so much better! This could be the Galra way!"_

_Zarkon let out a single cold breath of laughter._

_“Very well. Let me remind you of the Galra way.”_

_The emperor turned his back on Lotor, cape spinning behind him, and marched out from the atrium to the balcony._

_When his meaning sank in, Lotor’s eyes widened in horror._

_“Father, no.” He was already begging. He strode forward after the emperor. “Father, please, you can’t.”_

_The emperor ignored him. He signaled to his ship outside. The prince became desperate._

_“No, please do not do this, Father. Do not make innocent people suffer for my actions.”_

_“It is already done.” Zarkon glanced over his shoulder only to give the high priestess a brief nod. She understood._

_“I will do as you ask,” Lotor pleaded. “I’ll amend the colony’s ways.”_

_This unsightly begging just wouldn’t do, and the emperor was done listening to it. The priestess took care of the prince for him. The blast of energy from her fingertips was enough to knock him out and silence him. He screamed before he hit the ground, but if it hurt, that was his own fault._

 

 

_It took a varga for the prince to wake. His father had instructed the soldiers to leave him on the floor, right in front of the observation deck window. He had a prime seat to see the smoldering remains of his once verdant planet._

_As soon as he began to stir, he pushed himself up on his hands, sitting still and staring out the window. Standing behind him, beside the emperor, the priestess watched with scant interest when his shoulders began to shake. She heard him utter a pathetic, agonized little, “No.” The emperor was the next to speak._

_“You are hereby banished from the Galra Empire,” Zarkon said, mechanical and measured as he hadn’t been before. “May you live out the remainder of your days far from my territories and alone with your shame.”_

_The empire swept out of the room. The priestess stayed a moment longer, studying the burning planet past the window. She had seen many planets burn in her time with the emperor, and it was bizarre that this one felt so pointedly familiar. She had to stare at it._

_“Have you nothing to say, witch?” the prince seethed from the floor. “Surely, even you can see the folly of your master’s actions.”_

_What did that matter, she wondered? What made this tiny world any different from thousands of other ruins?_

 

 

Everything was underway. The Alteans had made themselves a welcome, helpful presence, and the Galra had finally acclimated to them. Working together, using the shards of Lotor’s mech, they had begun a new project. Honerva didn’t think herself easily impressed, but her engineering team was one to be proud of. Every day, she took a turn through the cityship’s foundry to check their progress.

The Empire responded to her revelation in any number of ways. Many of them had already deserted, and some fleets followed those into the chaos, and yet many chose to stay with their Empress. Sometimes Rohvan would change their minds; he was a powerful ally to have vouch for her unfamiliar face.

But the admiral was no longer on the flagship. Honerva had sent him out with his own fleet to address the deserters more personally. She had plenty of security on the capital, and the Alteans were quick studies under the Galra soldiers’ training.

She was expecting the commander’s call when it came to her, and she answered it from inside her laboratory.

“Commander Sendak,” she acknowledged him, and he made his report as formally as ever.

“The lions of Voltron have arrived, as you suspected. Shall I capture them for you, Empress?”

“No,” she said. There was no need for them, and Zarkon wasn’t there to try and reclaim them. They would only get in the way. “Destroy them.”

He departed with a faithful, “Vrepit sa.”

She stepped out of her lab. It took her a bit of navigating to find who she was looking for, but there she was, in the office by the foundry. Luca had been stubborn and fierce when they had met on the colony, and she had become a devoted and driven servant. She stood respectfully from her desk when Honerva entered.

“Voltron has been found,” Honerva told her. “It is time to test our first Altean acolyte.”

 

 

Standing beside her in the launch bay before a crowd of Galra soldiers and Alteans, Luca held her head high, as proud and brazen as ever.

“The time has come to send out our first acolyte,” Honerva announced to the room. “Voltron has been located on Planet Earth. The first step in accomplishing my dream, my son Lotor’s dream, is avenging the damage done to him and destroying his greatest enemy. We thank you, brave Luca, for accepting this duty.”

“It is an honor, my empress,” Luca assured her. She knelt, and Honerva placed the helmet of her new suit over her head. Alteans did love their ceremony.

The acolyte was a divine accomplishment. Honerva thought even Alfor might have approved of it. Certainly, it was enough to stand up against his lions, and it was as large as the five of them put together. Luca was put in a secure capsule, and this was loaded into the center of the acolyte that she would pilot.

It was a marvel to witness when it launched. The acolyte’s sleek, deadly design made Honerva think of it as an angel of justice.

 

 

“High Priestess,” her latest acolyte reported from the doorway. “Luca has arrived at her destination.”

Honerva nodded without turning to the woman behind her, never looking away from the cell in front of her. It glowed lowly, and she had been standing in front of it for so long that she thought the purple light might seep into her skin.

“Very good.” It was as much an acknowledgement as a dismissal, but she could feel the woman waiting in the doorway, staring at the cell. “Pay him no mind. He is not himself again yet.”

She listened to the door slide shut again. She took in a deep breath and didn’t smile at the cell before her. She didn’t touch the barrier, as much as she wanted to. Its occupant sat at the end of the cell; he had nothing else to do.

“I can’t ask you to forgive me,” she said quietly.

“Then stop, witch.” His voice was distorted and layered, and painfully bitter.

Dark, ethereal tendrils like smoke clung to him and followed each jagged movement his wraithlike body made, as close as a shadow. For the moment, he had stopped trying to tear it off of himself. He hadn’t accepted it as his second skin, but he couldn’t do anything about it but seethe.

It had held him together in the rift, and now he wanted it gone.

“I’m going to take care of you,” she promised him. “I know how hard you’re fighting it, but be patient as I have.”

She gave in. She reached out and placed her fingertips on the glassy barrier.

He looked up sharply in warning. His violet eyes burned, so pale and bright that they were nearly white. She kept her hand on the glass.

“You were born to rule the greatest empire in history.”


	3. Link

The ICU was alive with static. Romelle saw the others through the window holding tight and still, waiting and watching Luca to see if she would snap again. Luca's wrists were cuffed to the arms of her examination chair, and when Romelle reached out to lay a hand on top of hers, Luca jerked back and pulled the chain taut.

"You're making a mistake," Luca growled. "You don't understand what Voltron has done, do you? They are no saviors."

"What are you talking about?" Romelle set her hand back in her own lap, but the longing to touch and comfort the woman beside her held strong. Luca glared at her, at the window, and then her again. She leaned as far as she could from her exam chair, and she kept quiet, below the range of the microphones she knew where all around them.

"They're the ones that defeated Lotor," Luca hissed. 

The unfinished way Luca said that made a stone drop in Romelle's chest.

"What do you know about Lotor?" Romelle asked.

Too much crossed Luca's face in that moment. Confusion, disbelief, anger, and then heartbroken sympathy.

"Romelle," she whispered, "they've destroyed the second colony. Lotor fought to protect it, but…"

Romelle shook her head, eyes stinging. Luca was too good for the situation they had put her in.

"There was no second colony, Luca."

 

* * *

 

Even with the conversation being recorded on the microphones, it looked too personal to listen in on. While Romelle and Luca talked, fast and quiet with increasing distress on their faces, the paladins hung behind the glass in the observation room.

“So,” Hunk began, sliding glances to the others. “Everyone else have fun at the party?”

“Yeah,” five dejected voices mumbled.

“Wow.” Hunk blinked and shuffled, trying to get comfortable where he leaned against the wall. “Love the enthusiasm. _I_ had fun, though. You know Shay, my girlfriend? We had a lot of fun. We got to dance, and we painted lanterns, and she made me this thing,” he added, lifting up one corner of a flower crown on his head. “I’ll cherish it until I die.”

"It's lovely, Hunk," Allura said kindly.

She hadn't looked at Lance, and he hadn't looked at her. They were standing on opposite sides of the room, and Lance looked just about as tragic as a kicked puppy. Hunk guessed that things hadn't gone well.

At least he had tried. Hunk would do his best to cheer him up later.

Coran looked as weary as Allura, brow pinched and attention on the conversation. Pidge was sulking about something in the corner, scowling at the corners of her mouth. Keith kept fidgeting and gnawing on his lip, but he watched dutifully through the glass. Shiro just looked exhausted.

Romelle looked the worst off of any of them. She was wearing one of Allura's dresses, blue and endearing in its honest simplicity, and her night had been ruined by the one thing she had been waiting for. Hunk watched through the glass as she pleaded with Luca, keeping one white-knuckled hand on the arm of the exam chair, and Luca began to shake her head and close herself off from Romelle's entreaties. Romelle was angry enough to hold back her tears.

 

* * *

 

"They've lied to you," Luca insisted in a whisper. This time, she turned her hand over, palm open, and Romelle set her hand over it. "Romelle, I'm afraid for you. They may have brainwashed you. Listen, you have to help me. Let me go, and I'll get us out of here. I'll take us to the capital."

"What capital?" Romelle asked warily.

Luca stopped short. The suspicion came back to her eyes.

"I can't tell you. Not if you don't trust me."

"Luca, I--"

"No," Luca snapped. "They're listening. You'll take everything I tell you back to those murderers." Romelle began to argue again, but Luca raised her voice over her. "If you're not going to help me, then get out."

"I'm _here_ to help you!" Romelle cried. "Luca, please. Our people are in danger. You must tell us who built that mech and who sent you here."

"Get," Luca said through her teeth, "out."

Romelle tore her hand from Luca's. She stood so abruptly that she knocked over her folding chair, and she left it clattering on the tile behind her.

She swept past the observation room and burst into the hallway. She had clasped a hand over her mouth in time to muffle her voice, but her shoulders shook heavily. Her eyes burned, so she kept them shut tightly, even when seven sets of worried footsteps padded into the hall behind her. She was pulled into two people’s arms.

"Romelle, I'm so sorry," the princess' soothing voice said.

Romelle shook her head and hugged Allura and Coran tightly.

"I'm sorry," she said haltingly. "I'm sorry I couldn't get her to... She can be so…"

"I'm certain she just needs some time," Coran assured her. "For now, at least, she'll be safe with us."

"We don't _have_ time," Keith reminded the group of them. "Whoever built that mech could be sending another one our way as we speak. Voltron and the Atlas together could barely beat the first one. We need something to work with."

"Luca only just woke up," Lance told him pointedly. "We can't rush her trusting us. If she wanted to trip us up, she could easily give us bad info."

"Either way," Shiro said, "the Atlas is deploying again in a couple of days. The Coalition has too much work to do off of Earth. The Galra are still occupying entire galaxies, and whether Luca talks to us or not, we have to carry on."

"What I'm getting out of this--" Hunk clapped a hand on Lance's shoulder and one on Keith's-- "is that we made progress today. We made contact. And now it's time to get some sleep and let Luca think it over." He smiled at Romelle. "We can try again tomorrow."

Romelle wiped her eyes on her wrist and nodded. Even if something happened, as Keith always feared, Earth was in good hands. Half the Coalition was there, and this time, the paladins would know how to handle anything thrown their way. Her only job was to worry about Luca.

 

* * *

 

The Atlas was slow to stir that morning, but Hunk had adjusted well to the twenty-four hour cycle of Earth. He had missed it, and as long as he was in Phoenix to enjoy it, he decided that he didn’t mind rising early.

The odd thing about it was that the paladins were the only ones whose most permanent residences were technically on the Atlas. The rest of the crew had bunks in the Garrison, or even homes in the city. After the gala, the vast majority of them had gone home for the night, not back to the Atlas.

They were the only ones on board.

Hunk didn’t miss being on a giant ship with only the seven of them, give or take a couple, but he did. Maybe a little. Everything felt so much busier and more crowded on Earth. And crowded was good! But with only the paladins on board, there was a glimmer of a chance that they could get up to their usual mischief. Hunk didn’t even have to wear his uniform when he walked out of his bunk and to the kitchen, but did so in his pajamas. He had kept the yellow ones from the castle, and wearing them felt like an invitation for some of the chaotic familiarity of the last few years to come back. When he walked into the mess, it had only one other occupant.

“Hey, Pidge, how’d you sleep?” Hunk asked cheerfully when he saw her at one of the tables, only for her to slump further down onto the tabletop, scrub the sand out of her eyes, and sip at her coffee with a gritty mumble. “Whoa. That good, huh?”

“Rough night,” she mumbled. “Was kinda sad after all that, so I ate like, a whole bag of sour goo and fell asleep in my suit. Then I had a nightmare that I mixed up the terms ‘solar system’ and ‘galaxy’. They’re orders of magnitude apart, Hunk. Even in my sleep, I shouldn’t ever get that one wrong.”

“Oh. No, you stop that right now.” Hunk reached over and took her coffee away, and he was rewarded with a small but grating screech when Pidge reached out to try and get it back. “You’ll give yourself an ulcer. I’m making you breakfast. Come on.”

Hunk headed to the kitchen, and Pidge rubbed her sleepy eyes and trudged after him. There was a small bar along the outer side of the kitchen, and Pidge took her seat there while Hunk stepped into his workspace and arranged his supplies. He set down a glass of orange juice in front of Pidge in place of her coffee, something a little better for her stomach, and got to work mixing pancake batter. Pidge took a sip and put her head down in her arms.

“Milky Way _solar system_ , Hunk,” Pidge wailed, muffled in her sleeves. “Just say it out loud once. Who could get that wrong? It’s like saying rock, paper, scissors out of order.”

Hunk stopped mixing the batter, frowned, and looked at her over his shoulder. “You mean, paper, scissors, rock?”

“What?” Pidge raised her head, looking haunted.

“No one says rock first,” Hunk said. “It’s paper, scissors, rock.”

Pidge stared at him.

“We can’t be friends anymore,” she informed him. Hunk saw her gearing up for a real debate when the kitchen door opened and Keith walked in, already dressed and awake.

“Oh, thank goodness,” Hunk sighed, and he asked with all the urgency the topic merited, “Keith, is it paper, scissors, rock, or rock, paper, scissors?”

Keith stopped with his hand on the fridge handle. He looked from Hunk to Pidge and back again.

“Rock, paper, scissors?” he guessed.

Hunk groaned in dismay, and Pidge cheered out loud and flinched when it made her head hurt worse. She held out her hands, one curled in a fist on the palm of the other.

“Okay, Keith, victory lap,” she laughed, so Keith turned away from the fridge to mimic the gesture. Hunk rolled his eyes while they counted down, “Rock, paper, scissors.”

Keith threw scissors on the third beat. Pidge continued on with a final count of, “Shoot,” and belatedly put down paper. Her motion stuttered, and she looked up at him in bafflement. When Keith looked back at her in just as much confusion, Hunk let himself grin wide.

“Oh, I see,” Hunk purred, taking the chance to be smug.

“Keith, no,” Pidge said gingerly. “It’s rock, paper, scissors, _shoot._ ”

Keith’s brow furrowed. “What, like, a gun?” he asked, making a pistol figure with his hand. He was doing his best.

“No, I mean…” Pidge ran through the example on her own hand with four beats. “Rock, paper, scissors, shoot.” She landed paper on her palm on ‘shoot’.

“Then why didn’t you say ‘shoot’ earlier?” Keith asked.

“It’s just how it goes,” Pidge explained desperately.

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is,” Pidge insisted.

“Why not just do it without ‘shoot’?” Keith pressed. “It makes more sense without it.”

Hunk found victory in the chaos. He laughed and poured the batter into neat circles on the pan.

“I’m done with both of you,” Pidge huffed.

“I didn’t do anything!” Keith said, and then the kitchen door slipped open and another team member joined them.

“What did I just walk into?” Shiro asked from the doorway. Hunk was disappointed that he was still the only one wearing his pajamas, with Pidge dressed and these two stiffs in uniform, but they all perked up to tell him good morning.

"A heated dispute. And no bagel," Hunk ordered the admiral, seeing him begin to reach for the cabinet, and Shiro stopped short. "I'm cooking.”

“Shiro.” Keith grinned and set his fist in his palm, and Shiro mirrored him, arching a brow.

It was creepy. They didn’t even talk. They only looked away from each other’s eyes to look down at their hands on every third beat. They tied on rock, then paper, then rock again. And then they both threw scissors four times in a row.

Then Keith put down rock while Shiro threw paper. 

Hunk and Pidge shouted. Keith growled, and Shiro only smirked.

“Paper is a weak win,” Keith protested.

“Does that make you feel better?” Shiro asked smugly, making his way to the coffee maker, and Keith grumbled something harmless.

“So, Shiro,” Hunk drawled, scooting closer to him along the counter. “Is it paper, scissors, rock, or rock, paper…?”

“Uh-uh,” Shiro stopped him. “I know where this goes. Leave me out of it.” He poured his coffee and made for the door.

“Shiro, get back here, you coward!” Hunk waved at him with the spatula, and Shiro laughed and shut the kitchen door on his way out to the tables. Keith smiled and took a carton of eggs out of the fridge.

"He says _jan-ken-pon_ ," Keith informed them as he took out a pan. "Which means rock, paper, scissors."

"You _monsters_ ," Hunk said.

"Will you forgive us if I make eggs?" Keith asked.

Hunk hummed in consideration, theatrically reluctant, and flipped the perfect golden pancakes on the skillet. "Maybe. You do a good scramble."

Keith didn't have Hunk's culinary experience, maybe, but it didn't matter. Hunk loved eating his friends' cooking more than his own.

"High praise, coming from you," Keith noted with a smile. It was rare and nice, seeing Keith smiling and cracking eggs into a bowl.

Simply making breakfast together was better than the mischief Hunk had been hoping for. Hunk finished up the pancakes and bacon, and Keith served up a generous supply of scrambled eggs. Pidge trailed after them to pick bacon off the platter, and Shiro joined them again to gather trays for serving.

"Anyone know what we're getting up to today?" Hunk asked the table as food was dished out. "Last night was… a surprise."

"We'll see if we can get through to Luca," Shiro said. "But we'll have to prepare for launch. Earth is still getting back on its feet, but--"

The side of his prosthetic arm knocked against his coffee mug when he reached for the syrup. It wasn't even a far reach. The mug tipped over and clattered, and half a cup of coffee rolled out onto the table.

The rest of them were already picking up paper towels and trying to sweep away the evidence. Hunk started to verbalize blame for the mug. Shiro stared at the mug for exactly one second, pressed his lips into a pale line, and then blotted up the spill himself.

"I've got it," he grumbled. It was a crime to see him so red-faced and ashamed.

They were saved from the ensuing silence when the door opened. Hunk looked back expecting to see Lance, but Allura stepped into the mess hall, followed by Coran and Romelle.

“Hey! Good morning!” Hunk leaned up to serve a few more trays. “We made plenty.” The three joined them gratefully, and Hunk took a look at Romelle. The skin under her eyes was weary and grey, and she ate slowly. 

“Is Lance up yet?” Hunk asked, peeking back toward the hallway as if he might step in at any moment.

Pidge shrugged and made the corresponding grunt.

"I saw him on my way down," Shiro reported. He finally got to the syrup, left-handed, and frowned. "He said he already ate. He didn't look like he'd slept well."

Hunk turned his eyes toward Allura without moving his head. She didn't seem to notice, but she frowned down at the mug of tea in her hands. He could have guessed, even without having seen Lance awkwardly avoiding Allura's eyes the night before: the confession hadn't gone well.

Not that it was his business, but that didn’t keep him from his morbid curiosity, and an intense sympathy for both of his friends.

“He’s probably just tired after the party,” Hunk said to the table, for Allura’s benefit. “He’ll be okay.”

 

* * *

 

The desert might not have been the most comfortable place to train, but at least Lance found some privacy beyond the Garrison walls. He had too much steam to work off; maybe the Arizona sun would help boil it out of him. Red sat nearby, and Lance wished she would give him a little more guidance. He didn't have the castle's training room to spar against simulations anymore, and he didn't exactly have a beginner's manual to using a sword. He would have to work on it alone.

The broadsword was heavy, and it demanded the use of different muscles and footwork than his familiar rifle. His shoulders ached, but he swung again, practicing what few basic stances and swings that he knew. He didn't even have a target to work with.

"You're going wide," a voice behind him said. Lance yelped and deactivated his bayard immediately. He turned around, and of course it was Keith, leaning against Red's front paw with his arms crossed. Kosmo sat beside his feet with his head tilted and his ears perked.

"Oh." Lance's neck was already flushed from exercise, but being caught sulking and making a fool of himself with his new sword just made his skin feel hotter. He turned his eyes away and tried to rub away some of the sweat. "Well, not all of us are naturally gifted. I've only had one actual lesson."

So he was still sulking. Keith could suffer it, if he had come all the way out here to make fun of him.

"Would you like some more?" Keith asked instead.

That required a double-take. Lance frowned and reviewed Keith's face for deception or mockery.

"Come again?"

"Lessons. Do you want to train with me?" Keith asked more clearly, but the set of his eyes looked odd--less brazen than usual. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"

A while.

The last time the two of them had trained together the way he was thinking, simply facing off in close quarters together, had been before Keith had left with the Blades. It had been more than a while. Lance bit his tongue regarding that.

“Sure,” he said instead. “Why not?”

Keith had a funny look on his face that spoke of caution--not like he was afraid of Lance, but like he was worried about what he might do next. He smiled anyway and took the Black Bayard from his hip, and it awoke and stretched into the form of a sword, dulled for training just as Lance’s was.

“First off,” Keith said, “you’re still moving like a marksman. You can’t station yourself in one spot like that. You have to move more.”

“Got it,” Lance said dryly, shifting on his feet. Keith strode easily, posture loose, and began to circle Lance, so Lance returned the courtesy so that they were walking in an orbit.

Keith broke the current and darted forward. Lance wasn't ready; Keith moved like a lightning strike, and though Lance had been braced, he couldn't tell where Keith was aiming before the flat of his dulled blade slapped Lance's shoulder.

It stung, but he could tell Keith was being gentle. Going easy on him. Handling him with pity gloves.

Lance retaliated. He lashed out and slapped Keith's blade away with his own, a clumsy shadow of a belated parry. Keith stepped back and appraised him, and Lance perceived disappointment.

"You can usually tell where your opponent will strike," Keith advised him, "by watching their body language. Watch their legs and feet. The way they shift their weight." He demonstrated a slow swing, moving from one leg to the other and turning the angle of his hips to favor the motion of the attack.

"Yeah," Lance mumbled, letting the point of his sword fall toward the ground. "That was day one of our combat training."

"It doesn't translate well from ranged to close quarters," Keith tried to reassure him. "We can practice until it's natural for you."

"You're being awfully nice today," Lance noted. He managed not to sound suspicious. Still, the comment brought Keith up short, and he furrowed his brow and glanced away.

"I'm trying," Keith said.

Lance didn't know how to read that. The best course of action seemed to be to step in and make to strike at Keith. Keith blocked him easily, but he was drawn back into the exercise.

They silently agreed upon silence, at least for a while. Keith instructed him with wordless corrections, taps to Lance’s knee when his posture started to weaken, and bats to his shoulders when he slipped up a parry. When Lance finally got a hit on Keith’s side, he earned an approving smile.

"You're not just being nice because of last night, right?" Lance asked then with a smile, like he was joking. "I'm a big boy. I'll get over it."

"No," Keith said more carefully than Lance would have liked. Keith had him moving, retreating, and he made Lance earn it when he shifted the flow of the fight and forced him back the other way. "But I'm surprised you thought I'd make fun of you for that."

"Well, someone has to," Lance said with half a shrug. Hunk and Pidge had certainly mocked him in the past for liking Allura. He made a thrust at Keith’s shoulder and was effortlessly deflected. He tried again, swinging faster and shifting the angle, and Keith blocked him again.

"Come on," Keith said, trying for their usual banter with a little half smile. "There are plenty of better things to make fun of you for."

Lance lashed out. He struck Keith's bayard out of his hand. Keith took a step back in surprise. The Black Bayard dematerialized on the cracked desert ground, and Lance let the red one follow suit.

Keith was going to wait for Lance to speak first. That was the worst part. Lance felt dry and dehydrated and hatefully warm, and he wondered if he could just walk away from this conversation.

"You don't have to say that," Lance said shakily.

It was all he wanted to say, but Keith gave him a gentle push with a, "Lance, what's wrong?" 

"I _know_ I'm the butt of the joke," Lance said flatly. "You saw I wasn't good enough for Allura.  _Everyone_ probably saw that. And Hunk and Pidge don't need me around, and I wasn't good enough to help Shiro, and I wasn't good enough to make you stay, and...”

“What are you talking about?” Keith asked, and he looked like he actually wanted an answer. Like he was actually worried. Lance’s jaw clenched, and he tucked his inactive bayard into place at his hip.

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“Don’t say you’re not good enough,” Keith said. “That’s not what I think. You’re--”

“Nonessential weight?” Lance suggested before he could shut himself up. Keith took that like a slap.

“When did I _ever_ say that?” Keith demanded, and Lance was embarrassed enough to answer.

“That night outside the Garrison, when we saved Shiro.” He shrugged again. He was plenty of other things. The seventh wheel. The goofball. The dumb one. The weak link. “It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.” Lance tried to laugh it off and failed to give much more than a tight, fake smile.

“No,” Keith snapped. It was strange, seeing that he wasn’t angry at Lance, but around him. On his behalf. Lance had never seen that before. “It matters. I shouldn’t have said that. I never thought that about you.”

“You didn’t even remember me,” Lance pointed out, and he managed his voice evenly enough to suit a remark on the weather. “It’s okay, man. Really. I don’t blame you.”

"Lance," Keith insisted, but Lance shook his head.

"It's okay. Really. Can we please not talk about it?"

Keith watched him for another three concerned seconds, but he nodded. Lance felt Kosmo's wet tongue on his hand, and he gave over his attention to the wolf.

 

* * *

 

“Thanks again for doing this,” Hunk said to Shay with what he knew was a big, adoring smile, and they each carried another crystal apiece from a Coalition supply ship. They did have to ration the crystals carefully. None of them were anything like battleship class, but he still hoped that they weren’t asking too much of the Balmeras.

“It’s no trouble,” Shay replied, even though Hunk knew it was, and he knew something was on her mind. She was looking at the ground too much.

“But?” he asked, setting his crystal down in a truck bed below the ramp. She sighed and did the same.

“I am concerned,” she confessed. She paused, not returning immediately to the cargo ship for the next load, but stood there in front of him in the middle of the Garrison’s loading bay. The huge doors were lifted open, and the hot afternoon sun poured into the busy, cavernous room through the west-facing wall. Everyone was transferring shipments and equipment or instructing others how to do so, and everyone was sweating.

“I fear for the Balmeras,” Shay said, frowning at the truck in front of them. “Many of them are still under Galra rule. And as the crystals are in such high demand from the Coalition, I wonder if we should not prioritize their rescue. The Galra are using them for fuel, as well. I must sound biased, but if we were to take the Balmeras from them, would we not be at a massive advantage over the Empire?”

Hunk thought it over before nodding. “That sounds right to me, yeah.”

“So we should direct the Atlas to Balmeras under Galra control, correct?”

“If not the Atlas itself, then other Coalition forces, absolutely,” Hunk replied. “The Atlas and Voltron are gonna have to take on the biggest fights. But we have forces across the universe who should concentrate on the Balmeras.”

“So you’ll bring this to Admiral Shirogane?” Shay asked urgently.

“Yeah, of course.” Was that even in question? Hunk studied the fretful look on her face and set a hand over her larger one, resting on the edge of the truck bed. “Babe, we’ll take care of it,” he promised. “You’re not being biased. This is important. We might have to divide the work, but we’ll do it.”

Shay smiled, and her broad shoulders relaxed by a modicum. She bent forward and butted her cheek against Hunk’s temple, which so far was her best estimate of a kiss, and he laughed softly and leaned against her.

“Thank you, Hunk.”

 

* * *

 

The MFEs needed surprisingly little maintenance, but James still had the squadron in the hangar to run extra diagnostics and tune-ups for the fourth time that week. If they were deploying in two days, they needed to be in flawless shape. If there was nothing else to fix, he had the pilots polishing their fighters.

Ryan hadn’t given him any flack during the drills and maintenance. Ina only made that weary, petulant face the third time he made her clean her spacecraft. Nadia was the one to pipe up, even though she had just found something else to fix in the cockpit of her fighter, and even though she didn’t know he was listening.

“Really, Leif,” Nadia groaned. “We _know_ we’re in top shape. If he makes us do this the whole time we’re deployed, I’m gonna barf.”

“He is justified,” Ina replied, scrubbing at the mirror-like surface of her fighter. “We’re minimizing the chance of mechanical failure for everyone’s safety.”

“What about pilot failure from sheer boredom?” Nadia grumbled. “We don’t need to show off like this. It’s not like we’re Voltron.” 

James nearly cracked a tooth.

“We don’t need to be Voltron, Officer Rizavi,” he said, making her jump and whip around. She smiled brightly and hid her cleaning rag behind her back, as if that would help her case. “The paladins don’t answer to anyone in the Voltron Coalition. The MFE squadron, though, is held accountable for its actions. We’re not celebrities; we’re soldiers. And as long as we have that sense of integrity, we do double drills and extra maintenance. Understood?”

Nadia Rizavi wasn’t unprofessional, and she wasn’t lazy. She was just anxious before leaving Earth for the first time, as they all were, and she couldn’t properly enjoy her excitement while she was cleaning a pristine fighter jet. She gave him a salute and a good, “Yes, sir.”

Ina stood with her cleaning rag, eyes passing from Nadia and back to James. She was innocent of dissent and knew it.

They had both done a good job. They had both put up with James’s pre-launch anxiety taking the form of perfectionism for this long. With just a couple of days left to enjoy Earth, James… could probably afford to give them a break.

“Finish up,” he decided. “Inspection in fifteen minutes, and then you’re dismissed.” He turned to go back to his own fighter, and he heard Rizavi whisper an emphatic, “ _Yes._ ”

 

* * *

 

This room hadn’t been a memorial hall the last time Shiro had seen the Garrison. The little plaques lining the arching wall were numerous enough to hurt his eyes.

It had been hard for him to walk into this room again, so he was grateful for the company Matt and Keith gave him. He hadn’t needed to ask them. It had been Matt’s idea and gentle suggestion when they had caught Shiro hovering near yet avoiding the doorway, and so the three of them had stopped by. He stood several steps away from the wall of names. He knew too many of them.

“I wish we’d ended things on better terms.” Shiro pushed out a faint laugh, too thin to hide the sigh underneath it. “I was such a brat. He was a few years older than me, so he tried to take care of me all the time. He used to get onto me for pushing myself. Imagine what he’d say now.” 

“He was one of the first friends I made when I came to the Garrison,” Matt said. “He was great to study with. He had this perfect memory. Kinda creepy,” he added with a quiet, fond laugh.

Keith kept his eyes down. “I thought he was a great teacher. He never coddled us, but he was so encouraging. He’d even stand up to the other instructors when he had to.”

Shiro had to smile, even when it stung. And then, even though he knew it would hurt, he ventured, “Can I ask you something? How did he take it, after I left?”

“He didn’t talk to me much,” Keith answered quietly. “And after the news, when they said you’d crashed… He didn’t talk to me much,” he said again.

"Oh," Shiro said. His arms were folded as well as he could get them, and he thumbed at the forearm of his prosthetic. He wondered if Adam had closed himself off from everyone. He wondered if Keith had been left alone by everyone. He didn't know what else to say but, "That's a shame."

Shiro stared at the floor. An especially deep breath gusted out of him, and he closed his eyes. He didn’t want to think about this, but it had been weighing on his chest for nearly three years.

“Shiro?” Matt prompted him, treading softly. The ache welled up in his throat like nausea anyway. Matt and Keith were going to wait until Shiro spoke, so he spoke.

“He asked me to marry him.”

The other two were quiet. He heard Matt whisper, “Oh, Shiro.”

“He asked me to stay home and marry him, and I said no. I was going to Kerberos. We were both so angry. He said I was putting the mission in jeopardy. I told him I wasn’t going to waste my last few years just wishing I’d seen the edge of the solar system. He asked if it would really be a waste.”

Shiro took another deep breath and felt Matt’s hand on his shoulder.

“I told him I couldn’t marry someone who wanted me to sit at home and wait to die,” he finished in a voice like ash.

There was nothing to say to that. There was nothing encouraging to be had there. Matt turned and pulled Shiro into a hug, and Shiro accepted it. He felt Keith’s hand on his back and his cheek on his shoulder.

It didn’t remotely make it okay. It didn’t change the last things Shiro had said to someone he had loved. It didn’t even make it hurt less, but it comforted him on the surface of it.

“Can I have…? I’ll catch up,” Shiro said, and the two of them understood. He was grateful for their company, and he was grateful for their sensitivity when they touched his shoulders as they stepped away and then left the room.

He stood by himself for a long time. He gathered up a breath and bolstered himself, and he finally took those steps toward the wall, close enough to read the names.

He touched a few of the portraits. Each one added a weight in his heart, but eventually, he had read every name on the wall. When he returned to Adam’s, his fingertips traced the outline of the portrait, and then the engraved letters beside it.

He had thanked him before the launch for Kerberos. It had been stiff and formal after their breakup, but there had been something warm and affectionate at the core of the interaction. It was only natural, after loving someone for so many years. He had shaken his hand, and someone had broken that wall of ice and drawn the other in for a hug.

Adam had told him good luck.

Shiro had said the same to him, but that hadn’t been enough.

There was nothing else to say but a quiet, “Goodbye, Adam.”

 

* * *

 

"Why are we out shopping again?" Lance asked, though he hadn't put up any fight against the suggestion. Phoenix's streets had been largely cleaned up from the previous night, but there were still flower petals and ribbons dotting the ground. It wasn't a detriment, and the walk was a nice distraction. After a morning of hard training and then scanning another ruined city for survivors in Red, Lance was eager for something to keep his mind off of things.

"No reason," Hunk replied. “You're just looking kind of blue lately. Thought it might be nice to get out and walk."

It was sweet of Hunk to notice, and Lance found smiling a little easier.

“Aw, thanks, buddy.”

“So I’ll get you something,” Hunk vowed. “Anything you want.”

Lance had spent all of his money on his family, and Hunk knew it, so he appreciated the gesture. He laughed and shook his head anyway.

“Ah, I don’t need anything. Just walking around is fine. But how are things with you and your new _girlfriend_?”

“Oh!” Hunk lit up, and Lance had to accept that he had opened a box that he wouldn’t be able to shut. “It’s great. I mean, not great because she’s not gonna be aboard the Atlas with us, but we’ll still be able to keep in contact. She’s gonna be working with the Coalition to rehabilitate reclaimed Balmeras. Isn’t that awesome?”

“Yes, it is,” Lance said.

“Right? She’s amazing. She has so many good ideas. And when we hold hands, her hand like, covers my entire arm. It’s really cute.”

This was the kind of happiness Hunk deserved. Lance ignored the bitter pang of envy he felt and kept smiling.

“That’s awesome, Hunk. I’m really happy for you.”

“Thanks, man. Me too.” Hunk looked ready to tell a whole story about his happy new relationship, but Lance was saved by an unexpected, “Oh, hey, it’s Coran.”

Oh. Oh, no, it was Coran, talking at a colorful store booth with a very affronted-looking unilu merchant. The way Coran had talked about unilu before had thrown some red flags for Lance, but seeing it firsthand made his stomach leap unpleasantly. He and Hunk picked up their pace.

"Are you _sure_ you don't have any available?" Coran pressed the merchant, hands on the edge of the booth in front of him.

"For the last time," the merchant sighed, "I don't have any _vilazrin_ in stock."

"I know you have a proclivity to save the best for the highest bidders," Coran went on. "I'm sure we could come to a-- Oh, hello, boys," he greeted Hunk and Lance when they flanked him.

"Hey, Coran," Lance said, throwing an arm around his shoulders. "Whatcha doing?"

"Trying to acquire some _vilazrin_ , and to talk some sense into this young man about how much a nunvil distiller actually costs," Coran huffed, and he gestured at a device on the counter roughly the size and shape of a coffee maker.

"It's two hundred and thirty cees," the shopkeeper said, sounding like he had been repeating himself. He looked barely older than Shiro and twice as tired. "I don't haggle, or whatever he's trying to do."

“Dude.” Hunk fixed Coran with a withering, disappointed look. Lance was busy with damage control.

“I am _so sorry,_ ” Lance told the shopkeeper. "We'll get him out of your hair. Come on, Coran."

They started to try and lead him away, but Coran complained, "But the distiller."

"Are you gonna pay two hundred thirty for it?" Hunk asked. Coran stared longingly at the machine and finally nodded.

"Very well," Coran sighed. "If that's what it takes. I suppose I should be grateful that you don't participate in the same kind of bartering as--”

Lance jabbed Coran's side with his elbow and earned an indignant huff.

"We're so sorry about him," Hunk said to the shopkeeper pleadingly. "Royal advisor. Talks down to everyone. You don't have to sell him anything."

The unilu narrowed his eyes at them, and to their surprise, patted the top of the machine.

"I'm gonna be honest. It's actually two hundred even. I tacked on thirty because he was rude, but I like you two."

"I knew it!" Coran cried, but Lance leaned into his side.

"Nope," Lance growled. "You were rude. Full price."

The _rude_ part finally seemed to hit Coran. He blinked at Lance, frowned, and then looked to the shopkeeper.

"Oh, my dear boy, I'm sorry," he started awkwardly. He wasn't a malicious guy, but he had his head shoved about a mile up his quiznak about some things. It was gratifying to get an apology out of him, but the shopkeep didn't seem comforted by much. He _did_ seem to like Coran's apologetic offer of two-fifty, though.

While that exchange took place, Lance had the pleasure of recognizing another rude man in the street. Iverson saw them and made a straight line for them. If Lance wasn't mistaken, he was a hue more pale than usual. 

“Have any of you seen Paladin Kogane?” the commander asked in place of a greeting.

“Not since this morning," Hunk replied, raising an eyebrow. "Why?”

“It’s nothing,” Iverson said too quickly. Lance had never seen him that frazzled, but he had also never talked casually enough with Commander Iverson to justify asking about it. “If you see him, tell him he and his mother are needed in the briefing room.”

He hurried away, and all Lance and Hunk could do was glance at each other, shrug, and help Coran with his new distiller.

 

* * *

 

A thin, speckled pelt of grass and small shrubs had begun to grow into the desert. Much of it was thanks to the Balmera crystals brought to support Earth’s damaged environment, and while the desert wasn’t being reshaped--too much vegetation would disrupt the ecosystem altogether--the desert’s natural flora was seeping back into place. Sagebrush and cholla cropped up where they belonged. Pidge had even seen a roadrunner from the air conditioned safety of Green’s cockpit.

Her mother stood beside her this time, though, and Colleen sorted through their projects on her datapad.

“I could never get you out in the garden,” her mother kept saying, more delighted each time she mentioned it. “And now you pilot the nature lion. I’m so proud.”

Green purred loudly in Pidge’s mind. Of course she loved her mother, the botanist. 

“Got coordinates for me?” Pidge asked, and when Colleen passed them along to her, Pidge turned Green toward that corner of Earth.

The regions near the Zaiforge canon bases had been scarred the worst. Many had been left barren, and others had been crippled by the war around them. They passed over city ruins as they flew, but Pidge couldn’t and wouldn’t stop to investigate them. Their target was an expanse of shredded landscape in South America, and she didn’t slow Green’s pace until they arrived.

She flew low over the ground, following a length of river, and set Green’s ability to work.

The ray of light from her lion’s mouth sprouted local plants and encouraged their growth. There was no sudden burst of fully grown trees; that sudden change could have been almost as harmful to the land as the destruction that had visited it before. It would have to change over time, but the sprouts would help. The little shoots would become saplings. The tiny sprouts would become passionflower vines. The forests would be left alone to regrow.

“Cacao trees,” her mom noted. “Orchids, bromeliads… And we’re close to a forest. It looks mostly undamaged. Animals will come from there.”

Colleen guided the efforts, and Pidge kept Green feeding the land as long as her own quintessence could fuel her. When she was exhausted, she set Green down by a river high in the landscape and overlooking miles of desecrated, recovering land.

Much of it had been damaged before the Galra had even arrived.

Tired as she was, she and her mom stepped into Green’s cargo hold. The Balmeran crystal allotted to them for this region wasn’t too large to carry, but it was unwieldy, and it took both of them to move it. They walked it down the ramp and carried it to the river, and they set it on the bank with half of it in the water and half out.

“How long do you think it’ll take?” Pidge asked. She pushed the crystal to secure it in the ground and then stepped back to study it, the quiet new guardian of this budding forest.

“I don’t know, sweetie,” her mom said. “Normally, it could take hundreds of years for land like this to recover. And we can’t take help from things like Green and the crystals for granted. We have to do our part and take care of it--which mostly means leaving it alone.”

Pidge nodded and took off her helmet to wipe sweat out of her hair. A colorful bird flew past them, and she watched it circle back toward its greener home. Looking back down to the foot of the crystal, she saw a tiny vine uncurl from the ground and stretch out, seeking sunlight with a couple of tender leaves.

“It’s beautiful,” she admitted. Her mom watched the little vine and smiled.

 

* * *

 

Keith had expected a meeting. Instead, when he and his mother stepped into the briefing room, there were only four people at the end of the long table: Kolivan, Samuel Holt, Commander Iverson, and Shiro. The room was too bright; there were too many lights on for such a small number of people.

Shiro was already on his feet, both hands planted on the table, and he cut himself off in the middle of something that sounded like, “supposed to tell him,” speaking to the others with a low desperation. When every face at the table turned toward Keith, everyone went silent.

Keith didn’t like this. He wasn’t used to private meetings. If they wanted to tell something to him and his mother alone, it could only be bad news. He looked between the four of them, and still holding onto the hope that everyone else was going to show up and diffuse the weight of this conference, asked, “Are we early?”

“Keith,” Sam began, and Keith thought he was handling his name a little too gingerly. “Kolivan's brought something to our attention that you need to see.”

Beside Sam, Kolivan took an uncharacteristic pause. He looked down at the table and waited a full three seconds. Keith had almost never seen Kolivan need to take a moment before speaking. It was rare and frightening, but no one could fully divorce themself from their emotions, and for all the emotion Kolivan showed on the regular, he might as well have screamed.

“There are still a few Blades remaining, hiding within the Empire and its broken factions,” Kolivan reported. “The Galra are at war amongst themselves now, but it appears that over half of them are still loyal to the Empire. Even cut in two, their forces are massive. They’re pulling back together, and they’ve begun retaking colonies and destroying the deserters who won’t return to them. One of our agents is aboard an Empire loyalist transport ship, and it's confirmed that they are holding human captives.”

Keith's shoulders straightened. “Prisoners from the war? How many?”

“Upwards of a hundred,” Kolivan answered. “The Galra have been using them for labor, but it's likely that they're holding onto them now as hostages if we try to challenge them. We have images of the prisoners during a transfer.”

“Shouldn't the rest of the team be here?” Keith reminded them, stepping toward their end of the table. 

“We needed to tell the two of you first,” Sam said. “Commander Iverson identified one of the captives.”

“Kolivan,” Krolia said tightly. “What’s going on?”

Kolivan’s jaw strained for a second, and his eyes turned to Iverson. “That’s for _him_ to explain,” he said, exceptionally cold and clipped.

Iverson stood from his chair, and it was too formal and uncomfortable a gesture. Keith just wanted a cut-and-dry meeting, not whatever this was turning into. The commander set his hands on the table and gathered the last words that Keith had expected to hear.

“You probably don’t remember me,” Iverson began. Keith’s brow pinched into a frown; how could he not remember the instructor who had yelled at him and hundreds of other cadets every day for two years? “Not from the Garrison. I’m the one who drove you to the police station.”

Iverson certainly wasn’t the one who had driven Keith to juvie.

But then it dawned on him like ice melting in his spine.

“After the fire,” Keith said as calmly as he could manage.

Officers had shown up on his doorstep. They had said his dad wasn’t coming home. One of them had taken him to the station, and the foster system had picked him up from there. Keith had been inconsolable and unable to discern much around him at all, but he could picture Iverson’s face as the oddly gentle presence in the driver’s seat. He hadn’t said much.

“You-- Why was a Garrison officer at my house?” Keith didn’t own up to his voice shaking. “You said-- You said there was a fire. Why would the Garrison respond to--?”

“Keith.” Iverson almost sounded kind. He looked like speaking wounded him. “The Garrison has known about extraterrestrial life far, far longer than we ever disclosed. Longer than the brass told many of our own. I was stationed at home, with the bureaucracy, but the officers on active missions--” He sent glances toward Sam and Shiro, who looked increasingly sick-- “were kept in the dark about most of it. It was a psychological burden, and it was a potential danger that we didn’t want to discourage them during highly stressful space travel. The Garrison had decided that if our crew was ever taken by alien life, they would be pronounced dead."

It wasn’t as satisfying as Keith had hoped, hearing Iverson admit it. He swallowed a lump of nausea and unclenched his teeth.

“I see why the Kerberos cover-up was so easy for the brass, then," Keith growled.

“Not easy,” Iverson said quietly. “Necessary. And we know you didn’t buy it. But this isn’t about Kerberos.”

Iverson pushed an envelope across the table. Keith took it, opened it, and removed a moderate stack of paper and several photographs paperclipped on top. The photos were clear, and the ice ran into Keith’s limbs. As he went, his mother took the pictures and studied them for herself. They trembled in her hands.

“Why do you have pictures of my house? I--” Keith kept shuffling through the images until he found one that the Garrison never should have had.

There was a site of strangely packed dirt in the desert. The photo was attached to notes about the surrounding area. The next pictures were of the excavation. It wasn’t Blue that the Garrison unearthed; it was the wreckage of a Galra fighter.

“Your father must have towed it away from the house,” Iverson said, “and buried it with dynamite to hide the evidence. But the Garrison satellites found the vessel’s landing site, not even half a mile from your home. It was only located years after the crash, and the Garrison started investigating what few residents the area had.

“The Garrison sent officers to your house a few times, just to speak with your father. He never told us anything. After the wreckage was recovered, though, it was taken to a research facility separate from the base. That same week, your father broke into the facility and set an explosive on the wreckage.”

“Why would he do that?” Keith asked, hardly understanding what he was asking when he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

“Probably the same reason I took you to the police that morning,” Iverson said, “before the researchers could look twice at you.”

To protect him. His dad had bombed government property to destroy the evidence of his heritage and protect him.

“Why are you telling us this?” Keith asked brokenly. Iverson wasn’t _cruel_. There was no reason to torture them with a new story on how they had lost his dad. Iverson stared back at him and found the audacity to answer.

“Your father didn’t die there, Keith.”

Keith’s mouth turned to cotton. He gripped the back of the chair in front of him, but the world didn’t make sense, tilted at this angle. 

Where _had_ his father died, then?

“Where is he?” his mother’s voice asked beside him icily, hard and watery.

“The Garrison arrested him that night.” Iverson just wouldn’t _shut up._  “We had the authority to hold him in a military prison close to the research facility. He was a special case--he'd had direct contact with extraterrestrial technology--and the brass invented a story about his death to keep him in prison for questioning without a trial. He never said anything. He was secure there, until three years ago. The prison was destroyed in the Galra attack, and we’d thought that all personnel and inmates had been lost with it. But it appears that they were taken instead.”

Iverson slipped one more item across the table: a datapad displaying security footage aboard a Galra ship, then close-up images of the captives that Kolivan's agent had found. Keith didn’t know any of the faces but one. His mother inhaled sharply as if struck, but Keith couldn’t find it in himself to breathe.

The man’s face was bruised and dirty. His dark hair was streaked with grey, and his beard had grown out. He wore a dirty grey prison uniform, a prideful, solemn frown, and a scar across his eyebrow.

That was his father.

His father was alive.

His father was on a Galra prison ship.

His father had--

Commander Iverson’s face was the only thing in Keith’s vision. He thought he could see every pore of his drawn skin, every blood vessel in his wide, remaining eye. Keith let out one shaken, bitterly cold breath.

“ _You_.”

It seemed so clear in front of him: the only course of action was to surge forward and launch himself over the table towards Iverson. He even got halfway up before a pair of arms cut his motion short. Shiro held him back, and all Keith could do was thrash and struggle against him, reaching for the table and gouging marks into it with claws he wasn’t supposed to have. Distantly, he registered Kolivan moving from his seat and out of his view--maybe toward Krolia--but his eyes were locked on Iverson, standing stiffly, taking in each word that Keith screamed at him.

“You lied to me!” His eyes and tongue were burning. He only wished the fire in his chest could have hurt someone else with him. He wished Iverson would flinch a little more. “You lied about Shiro! You lied about my _dad!_ You left me all alone!”

“Keith.” That was Shiro’s voice behind him. The pain in Keith’s heart lurched, and he stopped fighting just long enough to turn around, gripping Shiro by the elbow when he looked at him. Shiro stared back at him in a second of fearful, sympathetic silence.

“Shiro,” Keith rasped, chest coiling painfully, “did you know about this?”

Something in Shiro’s face broke, like Keith might as well have slapped him.

“Keith, no.” Shiro spoke gently, just as astonished as Keith was that he could even ask him that question. “I swear, I didn’t know.”

He believed him. He still hurt.

"Keith," Iverson had the gall to say. "I can't tell you how sorry I--"

“You looked me in the eye,” Keith snapped, "and told me Shiro was dead. You looked me in the eye every day for _two years_ and let me think my dad was dead, and you knew he was in a cell down the road. I don't want to hear _anything_ you have to say."

He didn't even want to look at Mitch Iverson anymore. He pulled away from Shiro, and Shiro let him go. Keith looked to his mother instead.

She was holding tight to Kolivan. She and Keith had needed someone steady to support them through the news, but Keith knew they would be ready to face this together. Her face was buried in Kolivan's shoulder, and he simply held her and murmured, "You know what to do, little one."

She straightened her back. She nodded and stepped away from him, and she turned to Keith instead to take his shoulders in her hands.

"We're going to get him back," she vowed. Her voice was dark and bitter, but brimming with energy. She was as ready for this fight as he was.

She had already made her apologies in the abyss. Keith knew that she hated herself for ever leaving him alone, even though he also knew that the Galra would have found Earth years ago had she not left to throw them off the trail. They both knew that he didn't need her to say it again, but in that moment, he saw the same remorse in her eyes. He kept his eyes on hers and nodded. Then he turned back to Shiro.

"Admiral," Keith said. "Will the Atlas' first order of business be to save the prisoners aboard that ship?"

Shiro’s brow had a sobering crease in it, and he searched Keith’s face in his worried way. They didn’t have time for Shiro to worry about him.

Though Shiro probably knew that if he said no, Keith would just have to go and take care of it himself.

“Two days,” Shiro said. “We’ll have our people back in three.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes I will retcon anything I want


End file.
